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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Supreme Court / Joined 1967 / Served to 1973

Thomas E. Brennan

Justice, Michigan Supreme Court

Thomas E. Brennan was a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1967. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1929 · age 97
Tenure: 1967–1973 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1967	Michigan Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Detroit Mercy
University of Detroit Mercy

Judicial Record

In our data, Brennan authored 78 published opinions for the court (1967–1973), plus 59 dissents and 16 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Anderson (325 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. 78 of these were attributed to Brennan 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
1973	People v. Anderson· Concurrence†	205 N.W.2d 461	325
1973	People v. White· Dissent†	212 N.W.2d 222	234
1972	People v. Jaworski· Dissent†	194 N.W.2d 868	227
1973	Ben P. Fyke & Sons v. Gunter Co.· Dissent†	213 N.W.2d 134	215
1972	People v. Grimmett· Dissent†	202 N.W.2d 278	198
1973	People v. Turner· Dissent†	210 N.W.2d 336	183
1972	Reich v. State Highway Department· Dissent†	194 N.W.2d 700	176
1971	Pompey v. General Motors Corp.	189 N.W.2d 243	175
1973	People v. Adams· Dissent†	205 N.W.2d 415	166
1973	People v. Bobo· Dissent†	212 N.W.2d 190	164
1972	Connelly v. Paul Ruddy's Equipment Repair & Service Co.	200 N.W.2d 70	151
1972	Plumley v. Klein· Dissent†	199 N.W.2d 169	144
1968	People v. Winegar	158 N.W.2d 395	130
1971	Judges of the 74th Judicial District v. Bay County	190 N.W.2d 219	118
1970	Daley v. LaCroix· Dissent†	179 N.W.2d 390	113

Showing the 15 most-cited of 153 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 Thomas E. Brennan on?: Thomas E. Brennan 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).