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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Supreme Court / Joined 1997 / Served to 2013

Marilyn Jean Kelly

Justice, Michigan Supreme Court

Marilyn Jean Kelly was a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1997. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1938 · age 88
Tenure: 1997–2013 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1997	Michigan Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Kelly authored 1,003 published opinions for the court (1997–2013), plus 193 dissents and 95 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Carines (3,769 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. 324 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
1999	People v. Carines· Concurrence†	597 N.W.2d 130	3,769
1999	Maiden v. Rozwood· Dissent†	597 N.W.2d 817	2,570
2003	West v. General Motors Corp.· Dissent†	665 N.W.2d 468	1,089
2000	People v. Carter· Dissent†	612 N.W.2d 144	856
2005	Rory v. Continental Insurance· Dissent†	703 N.W.2d 23	747
2011	People v. Kowalski†	489 Mich. 488	681
2000	Robinson v. City of Detroit· Concurrence†	613 N.W.2d 307	662
2002	People v. Hardiman· Dissent†	646 N.W.2d 158	576
2012	People v. Watkins; People v. Pullen· Dissent†	491 Mich. 450	466
2012	People v. Reese· Concurrence†	491 Mich. 127	448
2008	Walters v. Nadell· Concurrence†	751 N.W.2d 431	431
2012	Joseph v. Auto Club Insurance Association†	491 Mich. 200	410
2004	Adair v. State· Concurrence†	680 N.W.2d 386	409
2007	People v. Smith· Dissent†	733 N.W.2d 351	408
2002	Pohutski v. City of Allen Park· Dissent†	641 N.W.2d 219	403

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,291 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 Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Marilyn Jean Kelly on?: Marilyn Jean Kelly was a Justice of the Michigan 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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16 years on the Michigan Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).