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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Supreme Court / Joined 1962 / Served to 1973

Paul L. Adams

Justice, Michigan Supreme Court

Paul L. Adams was a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1962. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1908–1990
Tenure: 1962–1973 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1962	Michigan Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Adams authored 152 published opinions for the court (1962–1972), plus 41 dissents and 30 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Snow (245 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. 85 of these were attributed to Adams 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
1972	People v. Snow	194 N.W.2d 314	245
1971	Traverse City School Dist. v. Atty. Gen.· Concurrence†	185 N.W.2d 9	231
1965	Durant v. Stahlin	135 N.W.2d 392	184
1972	People v. Lorentzen	194 N.W.2d 827	181
1972	Reich v. State Highway Department	194 N.W.2d 700	176
1967	People v. Liggett	148 N.W.2d 784	163
1965	Felgner v. Anderson· Concurrence†	133 N.W.2d 136	143
1968	People v. Winegar· Dissent†	158 N.W.2d 395	130
1972	People v. Eddington	198 N.W.2d 297	129
1968	People v. Dunn· Concurrence†	158 N.W.2d 404	127
1969	People v. Cole· Concurrence†	172 N.W.2d 354	121
1967	Fox v. Employment Security Commission· Concurrence†	153 N.W.2d 644	114
1972	Dale v. Whiteman	202 N.W.2d 797	108
1962	Christine Building Co. v. City of Troy· Dissent†	116 N.W.2d 816	108
1965	People v. Zaleski	133 N.W.2d 175	100

Showing the 15 most-cited of 223 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 Paul L. Adams on?: Paul L. Adams 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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11 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).