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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1995 / Served to 2011

W. William Leaphart

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

W. William Leaphart was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1995. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1946 · age 80
Tenure: 1995–2011 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1995	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Leaphart authored 693 published opinions for the court (1995–2011), plus 139 dissents and 86 concurrences. Most cited: Bruner v. Yellowstone County (264 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. 412 of these were attributed to Leaphart 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	Bruner v. Yellowstone County· Dissent†	272 Mont. 261	264
1996	State v. Finley· Dissent†	915 P.2d 208	233
2004	State v. Kougl†	323 Mont. 6	154
1995	Motarie v. Northern Montana Joint Refuse Disposal District	907 P.2d 154	152
2004	State v. Kougl	2004 MT 243	140
2001	State v. Gallagher	2001 MT 39	136
2007	In re D.B.†	339 Mont. 240	129
2004	Staples v. FARMERS UNION MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY	2004 MT 108	114
1999	State v. Montoya	1999 MT 180	109
2006	Baltrusch v. Baltrusch	2006 MT 51	107
1998	City of Billings v. Bruce· Concurrence†	1998 MT 186	93
1997	Stutzman v. Safeco Insurance Co. of America· Dissent†	945 P.2d 32	91
2007	State v. Swann	2007 MT 126	90
2000	State v. LaMere	2000 MT 45	90
2009	Jacobsen v. Allstate Insurance	2009 MT 248	88

Showing the 15 most-cited of 918 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 W. William Leaphart on?: W. William Leaphart 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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16 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).