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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Supreme Court / Joined 2014 / Active

Richard H. Bernstein

Justice, Michigan Supreme Court

Richard H. Bernstein is a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, serving since 2014. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1974 · age 52
Tenure: Since 2014 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2014	Michigan Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Bernstein authored 16 published opinions for the court (2015–2019), plus 4 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Stevens (286 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. 22 of these were attributed to Bernstein 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
2015	People v. Stevens†	498 Mich. 162	286
2018	Keyon Harrison v. Curt Vanderkooi†	918 N.W.2d 785	211
2016	Elher v. Misra· Dissent†	499 Mich. 11	175
2018	People of Michigan v. Kendrick Scott†	918 N.W.2d 676	169
2015	People v. Smith· Concurrence†	498 Mich. 466	129
2016	Altobelli v. Hartmann†	499 Mich. 284	99
2018	S. Dearborn Envtl. Improvement Ass'n, Inc. v. Dep't of Envtl. Quality†	917 N.W.2d 603	95
2018	People of Michigan v. Lovell Charles Sharpe· Concurrence†	918 N.W.2d 504	81
2016	Rock v. Crocker†	499 Mich. 247	72
2015	People v. Mazur†	497 Mich. 302	64
2015	Beals v. Michigan· Dissent†	497 Mich. 363	58
2016	Wyandotte Electric Supply Co. v. Electrical Technology Systems, Inc.†	499 Mich. 127	40
2016	People v. Feeley†	499 Mich. 429	27
2019	Roselyn Ford v. Department of Health and Human Services†	931 N.W.2d 571	24
2015	Michigan Coalition of State Employee Unions v. State of Michigan· Dissent†	498 Mich. 312	16

Showing the 15 most-cited of 22 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 is Richard H. Bernstein on?: Richard H. Bernstein is 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

12 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).