How do judges of the Court of Appeals of Minnesota reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Court of Appeals of Minnesota / Joined 2012 / Active

Michael L. Kirk

Judge, Court of Appeals of Minnesota

Michael L. Kirk is a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Minnesota, serving since 2012. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2012 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2012	Court of Appeals of Minnesota	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Kirk authored 33 published opinions for the court (2012–2018). Most cited: State v. Smith (28 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. 33 of these were attributed to Kirk 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
2012	State v. Smith†	825 N.W.2d 131	28
2018	State v. Walker†	913 N.W.2d 463	15
2017	State v. Ellis-Strong†	899 N.W.2d 531	11
2012	In re the Welfare of P.C.T.†	823 N.W.2d 676	11
2013	State v. Kelley†	832 N.W.2d 447	10
2014	State v. Tayari-Garrett†	841 N.W.2d 644	9
2017	In re the Civil Commitment of Kropp†	895 N.W.2d 647	8
2014	In re Distribution of Attorney's Fees between Stowman Law Firm, P.A., & Lori Peterson Law Firm†	855 N.W.2d 760	8
2015	Nicole LaPoint v. Family Orthodontics, P. A.†	872 N.W.2d 889	5
2015	State of Minnesota v. Quintin Deshun Dye†	871 N.W.2d 916	5
2014	State v. Carlson†	845 N.W.2d 827	5
2013	Godbout v. Department of Employment & Economic Development†	827 N.W.2d 799	5
2015	Michael Harlow v. State of Minnesota Department of Human Services†	862 N.W.2d 704	4
2013	Williams v. Commissioner of Public Safety†	830 N.W.2d 442	4
2016	State of Minnesota v. Alie Christine Theodore Dorn†	875 N.W.2d 357	3

Showing the 15 most-cited of 33 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 Court of Appeals of Minnesota reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court is Michael L. Kirk on?: Michael L. Kirk is a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Minnesota.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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14 years on the Court of Appeals of Minnesota. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).