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 1976 / Served to 1989

William R. Beasley

Judge, Michigan Court of Appeals

William R. Beasley was a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1976. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1976–1989 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1976	Michigan Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Beasley authored 395 published opinions for the court (1976–1989), plus 63 dissents and 33 concurrences. Most cited: Schipani v. Ford Motor Co. (135 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. 350 of these were attributed to Beasley 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
1981	Schipani v. Ford Motor Co.· Concurrence†	302 N.W.2d 307	135
1989	Jim-Bob, Inc v. Mehling†	443 N.W.2d 451	80
1978	People v. Walter Johnson†	272 N.W.2d 605	52
1982	Boyd v. Boyd· Concurrence†	323 N.W.2d 553	49
1984	Rogers v. Rogers†	356 N.W.2d 288	41
1983	Lins v. Evening News Ass'n†	342 N.W.2d 573	39
1977	Stefan v. White†	257 N.W.2d 206	39
1986	People v. Burgess†	396 N.W.2d 814	38
1980	Furness v. Public Service Commission	299 N.W.2d 35	36
1984	Totman v. Royal Oak School District	352 N.W.2d 364	34
1978	Wexford County Prosecutor v. Pranger†	268 N.W.2d 344	34
1984	McKee v. Department of Transportation†	349 N.W.2d 798	33
1983	Woodworth v. Woodworth	337 N.W.2d 332	33
1977	Johnson v. Chrysler Corp.· Concurrence†	254 N.W.2d 569	31
1980	People v. Sullivan· Dissent†	296 N.W.2d 81	30

Showing the 15 most-cited of 491 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 was William R. Beasley on?: William R. Beasley was 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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13 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).