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 1989 / Active

Kathleen Jansen

Judge, Michigan Court of Appeals

Kathleen Jansen is a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals, serving since 1989. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 1989 · 37 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1989	Michigan Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Jansen authored 172 published opinions for the court (1990–2018), plus 43 dissents and 38 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Unger (2,191 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. 249 of these were attributed to Jansen 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
2008	People v. Unger†	749 N.W.2d 272	2,191
2009	People v. Payne†	774 N.W.2d 714	885
2011	People v. Fonville· Concurrence†	291 Mich. App. 363	212
2007	Morris Pumps v. Centerline Piping, Inc.†	729 N.W.2d 898	209
2010	Shade v. Wright· Concurrence†	291 Mich. App. 17	196
2016	People v. Shaw· Dissent†	315 Mich. App. 668	172
2009	Innovative Adult Foster Care, Inc v. Ragin†	776 N.W.2d 398	170
1998	M&D, INC v. McCONKEY†	585 N.W.2d 33	166
1995	People v. Anderson†	531 N.W.2d 780	166
2005	Polkton Charter Township v. Pellegrom†	693 N.W.2d 170	143
2009	People v. Gayheart†	776 N.W.2d 330	140
2003	Wiley v. Henry Ford Cottage Hospital†	668 N.W.2d 402	132
1995	People v. Barclay†	528 N.W.2d 842	119
2008	Ypsilanti Charter Township v. Kircher†	761 N.W.2d 761	108
2004	Brown v. Loveman†	680 N.W.2d 432	96

Showing the 15 most-cited of 253 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 is Kathleen Jansen on?: Kathleen Jansen is 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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37 years 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).