Document Type
Legal Shorts
Abstract
The Montana Supreme Court is Montana’s highest court. Unlike most state court systems, Montana does not have an intermediate appellate court. The Montana Supreme Court hears direct appeals from all of the district courts across the state, as well as from the Workers’ Compensation Court and the Water Court. In keeping with the trends of recent years, the Montana Supreme Court has continued to issue more than twice the number of opinions as the United States Supreme Court. Many of these opinions become binding precedent that Montana’s legal community must keep abreast of and incorporate into their practices and scholarship. The Authors have collected statistics on cases, voting patterns, and other information to present a comprehensive picture of the opinions issued by the 2022 Montana Supreme Court. This project—originally inspired by the Harvard Law Review’s statistics project —continues the Montana Law Review’s yearly presentation of Montana Supreme Court Statistics. Our hope is that this information and the commentary provided within this Legal Short will be of use to litigants, practitioners, and scholars throughout Montana. We continue to encourage those interested to utilize this and our previously published data to perform additional statistical research into judicial trends over time.
Recommended Citation
Monte Cole & Adam Taub, Legal Short, The Montana Supreme Court – The Statistics, 84 Mont. L. Rev. 2 (2023).
