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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Supreme Court / Joined 1963 / Served to 1968

Michael D. O'Hara

Justice, Michigan Supreme Court

Michael D. O'Hara was a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1963. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1910–1978
Tenure: 1963–1968 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1963	Michigan Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Notre Dame

Judicial Record

In our data, O'Hara authored 66 published opinions for the court (1963–1968), plus 24 dissents and 33 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Walker (665 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. 123 of these were attributed to O'Hara 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
1965	People v. Walker†	132 N.W.2d 87	665
1965	Piercefield v. Remington Arms Co.†	133 N.W.2d 129	212
1964	Perin v. Peuler· Dissent†	130 N.W.2d 4	191
1965	Myers v. Genesee County Auditor†	133 N.W.2d 190	111
1963	Johnson v. Caldwell†	123 N.W.2d 785	100
1965	Currie v. Fiting· Concurrence†	134 N.W.2d 611	87
1965	Hill v. Harbor Steel & Supply Corp.· Concurrence†	132 N.W.2d 54	80
1964	Sherbutte v. City of Marine City†	130 N.W.2d 920	75
1965	Baker v. Alt†	132 N.W.2d 614	64
1968	Serinto v. Borman Food Stores· Dissent†	158 N.W.2d 485	61
1968	School District for the City of Holland v. Holland Education Ass'n†	157 N.W.2d 206	60
1964	Dudek v. Popp†	129 N.W.2d 393	60
1965	Bunda v. Hardwick· Concurrence†	138 N.W.2d 305	57
1966	Associated Truck Lines, Inc. v. Public Service Commission· Dissent†	140 N.W.2d 515	55
1965	Mosier v. Carney· Concurrence†	138 N.W.2d 343	53

Showing the 15 most-cited of 123 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 Michael D. O'Hara on?: Michael D. O'Hara 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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5 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).