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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Court of Appeals / Joined 1988 / Active

William B. Murphy

Judge, Michigan Court of Appeals

William B. Murphy is a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals, serving since 1988. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 1988 · 38 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1988	Michigan Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Murphy authored 277 published opinions for the court (1988–2018), plus 38 dissents and 40 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Dobek (1,294 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. 331 of these were attributed to Murphy 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
2007	People v. Dobek†	732 N.W.2d 546	1,294
2008	People v. Kanaan†	751 N.W.2d 57	702
2014	People v. Henderson†	306 Mich. App. 1	283
2007	People v. Chambers†	742 N.W.2d 610	271
2013	Pioneer State Mutual Insurance v. Dells†	301 Mich. App. 368	219
2015	PEOPLE v. McCHESTER†	310 Mich. App. 354	214
2016	People v. Biddles†	316 Mich. App. 148	187
2009	Marilyn Froling Revocable Living Trust v. Bloomfield Hills Country Club· Concurrence†	769 N.W.2d 234	187
2012	Moraccini v. City of Sterling Heights†	296 Mich. App. 387	177
2005	People v. Williams†	707 N.W.2d 624	167
2007	Sinicropi v. Mazurek†	729 N.W.2d 256	161
2009	People v. Aceval· Concurrence†	764 N.W.2d 285	149
2012	People v. Ryan†	295 Mich. App. 388	146
1993	Novotney v. Burger King Corp.· Dissent†	499 N.W.2d 379	143
2013	People v. McDade†	301 Mich. App. 343	142

Showing the 15 most-cited of 355 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 Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court is William B. Murphy on?: William B. Murphy is a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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38 years on the Michigan Court of Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).