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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Court of Appeals / Joined 1995 / Served to 2009

Michael R. Smolenski

Judge, Michigan Court of Appeals

Michael R. Smolenski was a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1995. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1995–2009 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1995	Michigan Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Smolenski authored 46 published opinions for the court (1995–2008), plus 8 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: People v. Uphaus (174 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. 45 of these were attributed to Smolenski 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
2008	People v. Uphaus†	748 N.W.2d 899	174
2003	Alan Custom Homes, Inc v. Krol†	667 N.W.2d 379	168
2006	People v. Conley	715 N.W.2d 377	143
2003	People v. Goodin†	668 N.W.2d 392	106
2003	Xu v. Gay†	668 N.W.2d 166	90
2005	In Re REISMAN ESTATE†	702 N.W.2d 658	81
2005	Hess v. Cannon Township· Dissent†	696 N.W.2d 742	59
2003	People v. Shipley†	662 N.W.2d 856	58
2001	DiPonio Construction Co. v. Rosati Masonry Co.†	631 N.W.2d 59	55
2008	Taylor v. Currie	743 N.W.2d 571	46
1995	In Re Schnell†	543 N.W.2d 11	45
2004	People v. Dunbar†	690 N.W.2d 476	43
1996	Carlton v. Department of Corrections†	546 N.W.2d 671	33
1997	People v. Brown	560 N.W.2d 80	32
2002	People v. Brown†	642 N.W.2d 382	28

Showing the 15 most-cited of 55 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 Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Michael R. Smolenski on?: Michael R. Smolenski was a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals.

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