How do judges of the New Mexico Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

New Mexico Supreme Court / Joined 1989 / Served to 1994

Seth D. Montgomery

Justice, New Mexico Supreme Court

Seth D. Montgomery was a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1989. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1937–1998
Tenure: 1989–1994 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1989	New Mexico Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Stanford University

Judicial Record

In our data, Montgomery authored 83 published opinions for the court (1987–1994), plus 9 dissents and 20 concurrences. Most cited: State Ex Rel. Helman v. Gallegos (289 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. 36 of these were attributed to Montgomery 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
1994	State Ex Rel. Helman v. Gallegos	871 P.2d 1352	289
1992	Kelly Inn No. 102, Inc. v. Kapnison	824 P.2d 1033	235
1992	State v. Garcia	837 P.2d 862	233
1993	Mark V, Inc. v. Mellekas	845 P.2d 1232	199
1993	Fernandez v. Farmers Ins. Co. of Arizona	857 P.2d 22	176
1992	State v. Orosco	833 P.2d 1146	169
1991	State v. Ortega	817 P.2d 1196	155
1991	State v. Osborne	808 P.2d 624	149
1994	State v. Hodge	882 P.2d 1	135
1990	Hale v. Basin Motor Co.· Concurrence†	795 P.2d 1006	127
1991	Bober v. New Mexico State Fair	808 P.2d 614	120
1994	State v. Sanders	872 P.2d 870	118
1991	Collins on Behalf of Collins v. Tabet	806 P.2d 40	118
1994	Bd. of Educ. of Carlsbad v. Harrell	882 P.2d 511	112
1990	Folz v. State· Concurrence†	797 P.2d 246	112

Showing the 15 most-cited of 112 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 New Mexico Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Seth D. Montgomery on?: Seth D. Montgomery was a Justice of the New Mexico 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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5 years on the New Mexico Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).