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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 2003 / Served to 2009

John Warner

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

John Warner was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2003. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1943 · age 83
Tenure: 2003–2009 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2003	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Warner authored 246 published opinions for the court (2003–2009), plus 41 dissents and 47 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Derbyshire (99 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. 169 of these were attributed to Warner 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
2009	State v. Derbyshire· Dissent†	2009 MT 27	99
2008	State v. Rosling· Concurrence†	2008 MT 62	85
2008	State v. Herman	2008 MT 187	77
2008	State v. Hamper· Dissent†	2008 MT 296	73
2004	Henricksen v. State· Concurrence†	2004 MT 20	73
2006	State v. Mizenko· Concurrence†	2006 MT 11	72
2003	State v. Daniels	2003 MT 247	70
2008	Fisher v. Swift Transportation Co.· Dissent†	2008 MT 105	56
2008	In Re the Custody & Parental Rights of D.A.	2008 MT 247	54
2008	State v. Clyde Hayden Sr.†	2008 MT 274	52
2008	State v. Matt· Dissent†	2008 MT 444	50
2008	Clark Fork Coalition v. Montana Department of Environmental Quality	2008 MT 407	50
2005	State v. Tracy	2005 MT 128	50
2008	State v. Raul Sanchez· Concurrence†	2008 MT 27	48
2008	Smith v. Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway Co.· Concurrence†	344 Mont. 278	45

Showing the 15 most-cited of 334 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 Warner on?: John Warner 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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6 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).