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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Supreme Court / Joined 1927 / Served to 1952

Walter H. North

Justice, Michigan Supreme Court

Walter H. North was a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1927. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1871–1952
Tenure: 1927–1952 · 25 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1927	Michigan Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Hillsdale Free Will Baptist College

Judicial Record

In our data, North authored 1,381 published opinions for the court (1927–1952), plus 59 dissents and 49 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Kayne (93 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. 74 of these were attributed to North 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
1934	People v. Kayne	255 N.W. 758	93
1931	City of Detroit v. Township of Redford	235 N.W. 217	91
1933	School District v. City of Pontiac	247 N.W. 474	71
1946	Michigan Bell Telephone Co. v. Public Service Commission	24 N.W.2d 200	68
1946	People v. Ignofo· Concurrence	24 N.W.2d 514	59
1930	Wayne County v. Auditor General	229 N.W. 911	57
1948	People v. Fleish	32 N.W.2d 700	54
1930	Garwols v. Bankers Trust Co.· Concurrence	232 N.W. 239	54
1952	City of Detroit v. Division 26 of the Amalgamated Ass'n of Street, Electric Railway & Motor Coach Employees of America	51 N.W.2d 228	53
1943	Senefsky v. City of Huntington Woods	12 N.W.2d 387	53
1931	Johnson v. Board of County Road Commissioners	235 N.W. 221	51
1944	In Re Olney's Estate	14 N.W.2d 574	50
1947	People v. Denuyl	29 N.W.2d 284	49
1934	People v. Tenerowicz	253 N.W. 296	49
1928	Fitzsimons & Galvin, Inc. v. Rogers	220 N.W. 881	49

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,511 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 Walter H. North on?: Walter H. North 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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25 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).