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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Supreme Court / Joined 1983 / Served to 1998

Patricia Jean Ehrhardt Pernick Boyle

Justice, Michigan Supreme Court

Patricia Jean Ehrhardt Pernick Boyle was a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1983. She earned a law degree from Wayne State University in 1963. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1937–2014
Tenure: 1983–1998 · 15 yrs
Education: Wayne State 1963 · Wayne State

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	Michigan Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Wayne State University	B.A.	1963
Wayne State University	J.D.	1963

Judicial Record

In our data, Boyle authored 134 published opinions for the court (1983–1998), plus 68 dissents and 151 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Milbourn (1,306 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. 353 of these were attributed to Boyle 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
1990	People v. Milbourn· Dissent†	461 N.W.2d 1	1,306
1992	People v. Wolfe· Concurrence†	489 N.W.2d 748	920
1996	Quinto v. Cross and Peters Co.†	547 N.W.2d 314	841
1994	People v. Pickens· Concurrence†	521 N.W.2d 797	763
1998	People v. Lemmon†	576 N.W.2d 129	606
1993	People v. VanderVliet†	508 N.W.2d 114	601
1994	People v. Stanaway· Concurrence†	521 N.W.2d 557	494
1998	People v. Crawford· Dissent†	582 N.W.2d 785	478
1985	Roberts v. Auto-Owners Insurance†	374 N.W.2d 905	347
1993	People v. Cobbs· Concurrence†	505 N.W.2d 208	320
1998	People v. Goecke†	579 N.W.2d 868	300
1993	Booth Newspapers, Inc v. University of Michigan Board of Regents· Concurrence†	507 N.W.2d 422	278
1992	Sparks v. Sparks· Concurrence†	485 N.W.2d 893	264
1993	People v. Kurylczyk· Concurrence†	505 N.W.2d 528	259
1992	People v. Bullock· Concurrence†	485 N.W.2d 866	252

Showing the 15 most-cited of 353 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 Patricia Jean Ehrhardt Pernick Boyle on?: Patricia Jean Ehrhardt Pernick Boyle was a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court.

Sources

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

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15 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).