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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Supreme Court / Joined 1971 / Served to 1975

John Swainson

Justice, Michigan Supreme Court

John Swainson was a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1971. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1925–1994
Tenure: 1971–1975 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1971	Michigan Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Olivet College
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Judicial Record

In our data, Swainson authored 62 published opinions for the court (1971–1975), plus 5 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Jackson (357 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. 9 of these were attributed to Swainson 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
1974	People v. Jackson· Concurrence†	217 N.W.2d 22	357
1973	People v. White	212 N.W.2d 222	234
1974	Detroit Police Officers Ass'n. v. City of Detroit	214 N.W.2d 803	198
1972	People v. Grimmett	202 N.W.2d 278	198
1973	People v. Turner	210 N.W.2d 336	183
1974	People v. Townes	218 N.W.2d 136	180
1971	People v. Hampton	187 N.W.2d 404	150
1971	Sifers v. Horen· Dissent†	188 N.W.2d 623	146
1972	People v. Charles O. Williams	194 N.W.2d 337	142
1971	Buscaino v. Rhodes	189 N.W.2d 202	141
1974	People v. Atley· Concurrence†	220 N.W.2d 465	138
1971	Stowers v. Wolodzko	191 N.W.2d 355	128
1973	Regents of the University v. Employment Relations Commission	204 N.W.2d 218	108
1972	Smith v. City of Detroit Swarthout	202 N.W.2d 300	97
1972	Detroit Police Officers Ass'n v. City of Detroit	190 N.W.2d 97	87

Showing the 15 most-cited of 70 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 Michigan Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was John Swainson on?: John Swainson was a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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