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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Supreme Court / Joined 1955 / Served to 1961

Talbot Smith

Justice, Michigan Supreme Court

Talbot Smith was a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1955. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1899–1978
Tenure: 1955–1961 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1955	Michigan Supreme Court	–	–

Education

United States Naval Academy

Judicial Record

In our data, Smith authored 50 published opinions for the court (1955–1960), plus 28 dissents and 14 concurrences. Most cited: Montgomery v. Stephan (164 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. 92 of these were attributed to Smith 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
1960	Montgomery v. Stephan†	101 N.W.2d 227	164
1960	Wycko v. Gnodtke†	105 N.W.2d 118	159
1959	People v. Gonzales· Concurrence†	97 N.W.2d 16	129
1957	Sheppard v. Michigan National Bank· Concurrence†	83 N.W.2d 614	126
1958	Crilly v. Ballou†	91 N.W.2d 493	103
1958	Fritts v. Krugh· Dissent†	92 N.W.2d 604	96
1960	People v. Zeigler· Dissent†	100 N.W.2d 456	94
1960	Taylor v. Auditor General†	103 N.W.2d 769	74
1960	Fluckey v. City of Plymouth†	100 N.W.2d 486	57
1957	Lyshak v. City of Detroit†	88 N.W.2d 596	52
1956	Powell v. Employment Security Commission· Dissent†	75 N.W.2d 874	52
1959	Schulte v. American Box Board Co.· Concurrence†	99 N.W.2d 367	50
1956	I. M. Dach Underwear Co. v. Employment Security Commission· Dissent†	80 N.W.2d 193	45
1959	Linski v. Employment Security Commission· Concurrence†	99 N.W.2d 582	44
1960	Scholle v. Secretary of State· Dissent†	104 N.W.2d 63	42

Showing the 15 most-cited of 92 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 was Talbot Smith on?: Talbot Smith was 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

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6 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).