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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1977 / Served to 1978

Paul Gerhart Hatfield

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

Paul Gerhart Hatfield was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1928–2000
Tenure: 1977–1978 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Great Falls

Judicial Record

In our data, Hatfield authored 8 published opinions for the court (1977). Most cited: State Ex Rel. Mankin v. Wilson (11 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. 8 of these were attributed to Hatfield 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
1977	State Ex Rel. Mankin v. Wilson†	569 P.2d 922	11
1977	State v. Briner†	567 P.2d 35	10
1977	State v. Cole Jr.†	174 Mont. 380	6
1977	State ex rel. Brackman v. District Court of the First Judicial District†	172 Mont. 24	5
1977	City of Livingston v. Montana Council No. 9†	174 Mont. 421	4
1977	State ex rel. Sullivan v. State†	174 Mont. 482	3
1977	Prudential Federal Savings & Loan v. McDougall†	173 Mont. 263	0
1977	Credit Counsellors, Inc. v. Alcorn†	173 Mont. 72	0

Showing the 8 most-cited of 8 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 Montana Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Paul Gerhart Hatfield on?: Paul Gerhart Hatfield was a Justice of the Montana 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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1 year on the Montana Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).