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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1985 / Served to 2000

William E. Hunt Sr.

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

William E. Hunt Sr. was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1985. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1923 · age 103
Tenure: 1985–2000 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1985	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Hunt authored 682 published opinions for the court (1985–2000), plus 145 dissents and 34 concurrences. Most cited: Story v. City of Bozeman (162 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. 383 of these were attributed to Hunt 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
1990	Story v. City of Bozeman· Dissent†	791 P.2d 767	162
1991	State v. Matt· Dissent†	814 P.2d 52	145
1986	Buckman v. Montana Deaconess Hospital	730 P.2d 380	117
1995	Daines v. Knight	888 P.2d 904	114
1986	Butte Community Union v. Lewis· Concurrence†	712 P.2d 1309	91
1999	State v. Guillaume	1999 MT 29	88
1998	State v. Kuneff· Concurrence†	1998 MT 287	74
1991	State v. Harris	808 P.2d 453	71
1995	State v. Martel†	902 P.2d 14	69
1990	Thayer v. Hicks	793 P.2d 784	67
1986	State v. Swanson	722 P.2d 1155	65
1999	Wendell v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance	1999 MT 17	62
1998	Johansen v. State, Dept. of Natural Resources	1998 MT 51	61
1990	D'AGOSTINO v. Swanson	784 P.2d 919	61
1985	State v. Long· Dissent†	700 P.2d 153	61

Showing the 15 most-cited of 861 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 William E. Hunt Sr. on?: William E. Hunt Sr. 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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15 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).