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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1939 / Served to 1941

Ralph Arnold

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

Ralph Arnold was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1939. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1939–1941 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1939	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Arnold authored 22 published opinions for the court (1937–1940), plus 3 concurrences. Most cited: Caird Engineering Works v. Seven-Up Gold Mining Co., Inc. (23 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. 2 of these were attributed to Arnold 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
1940	Caird Engineering Works v. Seven-Up Gold Mining Co., Inc.· Concurrence†	111 P.2d 1267	23
1939	State v. Simpson	95 P.2d 761	22
1940	Rosebud County v. Flinn	98 P.2d 330	20
1939	Ludwig v. Montana Bank and Trust Co.· Concurrence	98 P.2d 379	18
1940	Wolz v. Wolz	102 P.2d 22	15
1940	Tobacco River Power Co. v. Public Service Commission	98 P.2d 886	14
1939	State Ex Rel. Tong v. District Court	96 P.2d 918	13
1939	Valley County v. Thomas· Concurrence	97 P.2d 345	12
1940	Rossberg v. Montgomery Ward & Co.	99 P.2d 979	11
1940	In Re Benson's Estate	98 P.2d 868	11
1939	State v. Traufer	97 P.2d 336	11
1937	H. Earl Clack Co. v. Oltesvig	68 P.2d 586	10
1940	State Ex Rel. Langan v. District Court	107 P.2d 880	9
1940	State Ex Rel. Dussault v. Fox Missoula Theatre Corp.	101 P.2d 1065	9
1940	Montgomery v. Gilbert	108 P.2d 616	8

Showing the 15 most-cited of 25 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 Ralph Arnold on?: Ralph Arnold 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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2 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).