How do judges of the Montana Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1978 / Served to 1990

John C. Sheehy

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

John C. Sheehy was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1978. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1918–2011
Tenure: 1978–1990 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1978	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Sheehy authored 741 published opinions for the court (1978–1991), plus 207 dissents and 99 concurrences. Most cited: Steer, Inc. v. Department of Revenue (621 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 501 of these were attributed to Sheehy by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1990	Steer, Inc. v. Department of Revenue· Dissent†	803 P.2d 601	621
1990	Story v. City of Bozeman· Dissent†	791 P.2d 767	162
1979	State v. Coleman	605 P.2d 1000	133
1989	Meech v. Hillhaven West, Inc.· Dissent†	776 P.2d 488	116
1978	Cameron v. Cameron	587 P.2d 939	103
1985	Nicholson v. United Pacific Insurance· Concurrence†	710 P.2d 1342	101
1984	State v. Anderson· Dissent†	686 P.2d 193	95
1986	Butte Community Union v. Lewis· Concurrence†	712 P.2d 1309	91
1985	Limberhand v. Big Ditch Co.	706 P.2d 491	91
1985	In Re the Marriage of Rolfe	699 P.2d 79	79
1980	In Re the Marriage of Herron· Concurrence†	608 P.2d 97	79
1988	State v. Perry	758 P.2d 268	77
1988	Ew v. Dch	754 P.2d 817	76
1980	State v. Fitzpatrick†	186 Mont. 187	76
1984	State v. Liddell· Concurrence†	685 P.2d 918	75

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,048 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Montana Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was John C. Sheehy on?: John C. Sheehy was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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12 years on the Montana Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).