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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1991 / Served to 2008

Karla M. Gray

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

Karla M. Gray was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1991. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1947 · age 79
Tenure: 1991–2008 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1991	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Education

UC Law San Francisco

Judicial Record

In our data, Gray authored 657 published opinions for the court (1991–2008), plus 123 dissents and 165 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Finley (233 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. 467 of these were attributed to Gray 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
1996	State v. Finley· Concurrence†	915 P.2d 208	233
2004	Hawkins v. Montana State Prison· Concurrence†	2004 MT 289	168
1996	Busta Ex Rel. Busta v. Columbus Hospital Corp.· Concurrence†	916 P.2d 122	139
1998	Unified Industries, Inc. v. Easley	1998 MT 145	124
1999	Armstrong v. State· Concurrence†	1999 MT 261	120
2007	Sunburst School District No. 2 v. Texaco, Inc.· Concurrence†	2007 MT 183	108
1998	State v. Weaver· Concurrence†	1998 MT 167	104
1999	Oliver v. Stimson Lumber Co.· Concurrence†	1999 MT 328	100
2000	Schuff v. A.T. Klemens & Son· Concurrence†	2000 MT 357	99
2000	State v. LaMere· Concurrence†	2000 MT 45	90
1997	Ridley v. Guaranty National Insurance· Concurrence†	286 Mont. 325	84
1992	Goodover v. Lindey's Inc.	843 P.2d 765	80
2000	In re A.N.†	298 Mont. 237	79
1999	Montanans for the Responsible Use of the School Trust v. State Ex Rel. Board of Land Commissioners· Concurrence†	1999 MT 263	79
2006	State v. Hicks	2006 MT 71	78

Showing the 15 most-cited of 945 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 Karla M. Gray on?: Karla M. Gray 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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17 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).