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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1990 / Served to 2003

Terry Trieweiler

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

Terry Trieweiler was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1990. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1948 · age 78
Tenure: 1990–2003 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1990	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Drake University
Drake University

Judicial Record

In our data, Trieweiler authored 603 published opinions for the court (1991–2003), plus 173 dissents and 207 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Bullock (147 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. 533 of these were attributed to Trieweiler 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
1995	State v. Bullock	901 P.2d 61	147
1996	Busta Ex Rel. Busta v. Columbus Hospital Corp.	916 P.2d 122	139
1994	Mead v. M.S.B., Inc.†	264 Mont. 465	138
1993	Palmer v. Farmers Insurance Exchange· Dissent†	861 P.2d 895	109
2002	Kiely Construction, L.L.C. v. City of Red Lodge Ex Rel. Red Lodge City Council· Concurrence†	2002 MT 241	96
1998	City of Billings v. Bruce	1998 MT 186	93
1996	Plumb v. Fourth Judicial District Court	927 P.2d 1011	92
1998	State v. Lane· Dissent†	1998 MT 76	86
1996	Day v. Payne	929 P.2d 864	85
2003	Hardy v. Progressive Specialty Insurance Co.	2003 MT 85	84
1997	Ridley v. Guaranty National Insurance†	286 Mont. 325	84
1993	State v. Gollehon	864 P.2d 1257	82
1995	State v. Egelhoff· Concurrence†	272 Mont. 114	81
1992	Goodover v. Lindey's Inc.· Concurrence†	843 P.2d 765	80
2003	State v. Jefferson	2003 MT 90	79

Showing the 15 most-cited of 983 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 Terry Trieweiler on?: Terry Trieweiler 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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13 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).