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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1987 / Served to 1993

R. C. McDonough

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

R. C. McDonough was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1987. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1924 · age 102
Tenure: 1987–1993 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1987	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Education

George Washington University

Judicial Record

In our data, McDonough authored 326 published opinions for the court (1987–1993), plus 31 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: Interstate Production Credit Ass'n v. Desaye (318 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. 126 of these were attributed to McDonough 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
1991	Interstate Production Credit Ass'n v. Desaye	820 P.2d 1285	318
1989	Meech v. Hillhaven West, Inc.	776 P.2d 488	116
1993	Palmer v. Farmers Insurance Exchange	861 P.2d 895	109
1990	Kitchen Krafters, Inc. v. Eastside Bank	789 P.2d 567	92
1991	State v. Sadowski	805 P.2d 537	58
1993	Stratemeyer v. Lincoln County	855 P.2d 506	55
1992	State v. Crist†	253 Mont. 442	54
1989	North Fork Preservation Ass'n v. Department of State Lands	778 P.2d 862	54
1992	Maguire v. State	835 P.2d 755	52
1990	Barrett v. Asarco Inc.	799 P.2d 1078	52
1991	Buck v. Billings Montana Chevrolet, Inc.	811 P.2d 537	50
1988	Frigon v. Morrison-Maierle, Inc.	760 P.2d 57	50
1988	State v. Eiler· Dissent†	762 P.2d 210	48
1991	Associated Press v. Board of Public Education	804 P.2d 376	47
1990	State v. Gommenginger	790 P.2d 455	43

Showing the 15 most-cited of 365 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 R. C. McDonough on?: R. C. McDonough 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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6 years 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).