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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Supreme Court / Joined 1957 / Served to 1959

John D. Voelker

Justice, Michigan Supreme Court

John D. Voelker was a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1957. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1903–1991
Tenure: 1957–1959 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1957	Michigan Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Voelker authored 94 published opinions for the court (1957–1987), plus 2 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Mitcham v. City of Detroit (557 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 Voelker 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
1959	Mitcham v. City of Detroit	94 N.W.2d 388	557
1958	Spence v. Three Rivers Builders & Masonry Supply, Inc.	90 N.W.2d 873	170
1960	Wilson v. Doehler-Jarvis Division of National Lead Co.	100 N.W.2d 226	74
1957	White v. Sadler	87 N.W.2d 192	70
1958	People v. Allen	88 N.W.2d 433	64
1957	Van Dorpel v. Haven-Busch Co.	85 N.W.2d 97	55
1959	People v. Dye	96 N.W.2d 788	53
1958	Dora v. Lesinski	88 N.W.2d 592	50
1958	People v. Shotwell	88 N.W.2d 313	41
1959	Greene v. Greene	98 N.W.2d 519	32
1958	Sergeant v. Kennedy	90 N.W.2d 447	31
1959	Huffman v. First Baptist Church of Flushing	94 N.W.2d 869	30
1959	Knowlton v. City of Port Huron	94 N.W.2d 824	26
1958	Township of West Bloomfield v. Chapman	88 N.W.2d 377	25
1958	Allen v. Cheatum	88 N.W.2d 306	24

Showing the 15 most-cited of 98 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 D. Voelker on?: John D. Voelker 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

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2 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).