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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1947 / Served to 1953

Lee Metcalf

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

Lee Metcalf was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1947. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1911–1978
Tenure: 1947–1953 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1947	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Stanford University

Judicial Record

In our data, Metcalf authored 58 published opinions for the court (1947–1952), plus 19 dissents and 16 concurrences. Most cited: State Board of Equalization v. Cole (60 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. 28 of these were attributed to Metcalf 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
1948	State Board of Equalization v. Cole	195 P.2d 989	60
1949	Lowery v. Garfield County· Dissent	208 P.2d 478	54
1948	Emery v. Emery· Dissent	200 P.2d 251	52
1951	State v. Sauter· Concurrence†	232 P.2d 731	41
1947	Kornec v. Mike Horse Mining & Milling Co.	180 P.2d 252	32
1948	State v. Hay	194 P.2d 232	31
1949	Hart v. Barron· Concurrence	204 P.2d 797	28
1951	State v. Coloff· Concurrence†	231 P.2d 343	27
1952	State v. Searle· Dissent†	239 P.2d 995	26
1950	Johnson v. Elliot	218 P.2d 703	26
1948	State Ex Rel. State Aeronautics Commission v. Board of Examiners of State· Dissent	194 P.2d 633	26
1952	State v. Porter	242 P.2d 984	25
1949	Shaw v. Shaw· Dissent	208 P.2d 514	25
1948	Pritchard Petroleum Co. v. Farmers Co-Op. Oil & Supply Co.· Concurrence	190 P.2d 55	25
1952	State v. Storm· Concurrence†	238 P.2d 1161	24

Showing the 15 most-cited of 93 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 Lee Metcalf on?: Lee Metcalf 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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6 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).