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 2000 / Active

Kirsten F. Kelly

Judge, Michigan Court of Appeals

Kirsten F. Kelly is a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals, serving since 2000. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2000 · 26 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2000	Michigan Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Kelly authored 52 published opinions for the court (2000–2007), plus 13 dissents and 12 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Aldrich (621 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. 77 of these were attributed to Kelly 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
2001	People v. Aldrich†	631 N.W.2d 67	621
2005	In Re Fried†	702 N.W.2d 192	304
2003	People v. Gonzalez†	663 N.W.2d 499	138
2003	Wiley v. Henry Ford Cottage Hospital· Concurrence†	668 N.W.2d 402	132
2001	Foskett v. Foskett†	634 N.W.2d 363	120
2005	People v. Wilkens†	705 N.W.2d 728	118
2004	Rymal v. Baergen· Concurrence†	262 Mich. App. 274	89
2005	Pickering v. Pickering†	706 N.W.2d 835	84
2005	Doe v. Roman Catholic Archbishop of Detroit†	692 N.W.2d 398	84
2007	White v. Taylor Distributing Co.· Dissent†	739 N.W.2d 132	74
2000	Cole v. Ladbroke Racing Michigan, Inc†	614 N.W.2d 169	73
2001	People v. Mette†	621 N.W.2d 713	61
2000	Morinelli v. Provident Life and Accident Ins. Co.†	617 N.W.2d 777	61
2003	Ameritech Michigan v. PSC MICHIGAN PUBLIC SERVICE COMM'N†	658 N.W.2d 849	60
2000	Watts v. Polaczyk†	619 N.W.2d 714	56

Showing the 15 most-cited of 77 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 Kirsten F. Kelly on?: Kirsten F. Kelly 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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26 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).