Court Composition and Selection
The Montana Supreme Court presently consists of a Chief Justice and six Associate Justices. The Montana Constitution provides for only four Associate Justices, but allows the Montana Legislature to increase the number of Associate Justices to six. Each justice is elected for an eight-year term in a statewide, nonpartisan election. The terms are staggered so that no more than two seats on the court are scheduled for election at the same time. When a sitting justice runs unopposed, voters cast a "yes" or "no" vote as to whether to retain them. If the seat on the court is contested, the top two vote-getters in the primary election are selected as the final candidates.
Read more about this topic: Montana Supreme Court
Famous quotes containing the words court, composition and/or selection:
“The Twist was a guided missile, launched from the ghetto into the very heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded, as politics, religion, and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on the books.”
—Eldridge Cleaver (b. 1935)
“It is my PRIDE, my damn’d, native, unconquerable Pride, that plunges me into Distraction. You must know that 19-20th of my Composition is Pride. I must either live a Slave, a Servant; to have no Will of my own, no Sentiments of my own which I may freely declare as such;Mor DIE—perplexing alternative!”
—Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770)
“Every writer is necessarily a critic—that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on.... The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg—nine-tenths of him is under water.”
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975)