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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1957 / Served to 1977

Wesley Castles

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

Wesley Castles was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1957. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1919–1990
Tenure: 1957–1977 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1957	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Castles authored 551 published opinions for the court (1957–1976), plus 70 dissents and 40 concurrences. Most cited: Reeves v. Ille Electric Company (88 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. 322 of these were attributed to Castles 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
1976	Reeves v. Ille Electric Company· Concurrence†	551 P.2d 647	88
1960	State v. Randall· Dissent†	353 P.2d 1054	80
1958	State v. Peterson	328 P.2d 617	75
1966	Johnson v. St. Patrick's Hospital· Concurrence†	417 P.2d 469	73
1975	Crncevich v. Georgetown Recreation Corporation	541 P.2d 56	72
1957	State v. Bischert	308 P.2d 969	71
1959	State v. Greeno· Concurrence†	342 P.2d 1052	57
1967	St. Paul Fire & Marine Insurance v. Thompson	433 P.2d 795	56
1976	Keller v. Smith· Concurrence†	553 P.2d 1002	54
1965	State v. White†	146 Mont. 226	52
1976	Dunham v. Southside National Bank of Missoula	548 P.2d 1383	48
1975	Board of Regents of Higher Education v. Judge	543 P.2d 1323	48
1965	Krohmer v. Dahl	402 P.2d 979	48
1973	State v. Taylor†	163 Mont. 106	47
1960	Bacus v. Lake County	354 P.2d 1056	43

Showing the 15 most-cited of 661 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 Wesley Castles on?: Wesley Castles 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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20 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).