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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 2013 / Active

Laurie McKinnon

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

Laurie McKinnon is a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, serving since 2013. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1960 · age 66
Tenure: Since 2013 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2013	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, McKinnon authored 212 published opinions for the court (1965–2026), plus 76 dissents and 54 concurrences. Most cited: Tidyman's Manangement Services Inc. v. Davis (71 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. 304 of these were attributed to McKinnon 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
2014	Tidyman's Manangement Services Inc. v. Davis· Concurrence†	2014 MT 205	71
2013	State v. Aker· Dissent†	2013 MT 253	61
2019	Larson v. State· Dissent†	434 P.3d 241	54
2015	State v. Favel†	2015 MT 336	49
2017	State v. L. Akers†	2017 MT 311	46
2014	Tackett v. Duncan†	2014 MT 253	45
2014	Schoof v. Nesbit· Concurrence†	2014 MT 6	45
2013	City of Bozeman v. Cantu†	2013 MT 40	45
2014	Morrow v. Bank of America, N.A.· Concurrence†	2014 MT 117	44
2013	Williams v. Board of County Commissioners· Dissent†	2013 MT 243	42
2014	State v. Aragon· Dissent†	2014 MT 89	40
2015	State v. Betterman†	2015 MT 39	37
2016	Montana Cannabis Industry Ass'n v. State· Concurrence†	2016 MT 44	35
2016	Matter of J.B. Jr. YINC· Concurrence†	2016 MT 68	33
2015	State v. McClelland· Dissent†	2015 MT 281	33

Showing the 15 most-cited of 342 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 is Laurie McKinnon on?: Laurie McKinnon is 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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13 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).