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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Court of Appeals / Joined 1965 / Served to 1966

John D. Watts

Judge, Michigan Court of Appeals

John D. Watts was a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1965. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1965–1966 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1965	Michigan Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Watts authored 34 published opinions for the court (1965–1966). Most cited: Sloan v. Silberstein (26 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 Watts 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
1966	Sloan v. Silberstein	141 N.W.2d 332	26
1965	People v. Doris White	138 N.W.2d 492	20
1965	Baker Contractor, Inc. v. Chris Nelsen & Son, Inc.	136 N.W.2d 771	19
1966	People v. Vida	140 N.W.2d 559	16
1966	Serinto v. Borman Food Stores	142 N.W.2d 32	14
1965	Coffee-Rich, Inc. v. Department of Agriculture	135 N.W.2d 594	11
1965	Chamberlain v. Haanpaa	136 N.W.2d 32	10
1966	People v. Floyd	139 N.W.2d 124	9
1966	Olson v. Dahlen	141 N.W.2d 702	8
1966	Michigan Central Park Ass'n v. Roscommon County Road Commission	139 N.W.2d 333	8
1965	People v. Earnest Thomas	136 N.W.2d 721	8
1965	Bradshaw v. Blaine	134 N.W.2d 386	8
1965	Cullum v. Topps-Stillman's, Inc.	134 N.W.2d 349	8
1966	People v. Leach	141 N.W.2d 377	6
1966	People v. Napolitano	141 N.W.2d 356	6

Showing the 15 most-cited of 34 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 Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was John D. Watts on?: John D. Watts was a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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