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Elizabeth Clement
Elizabeth Clement (Republican Party) was a judge of the Michigan Supreme Court. She assumed office in 2017. She left office on April 15, 2025.
Clement (Republican Party) ran for re-election for judge of the Michigan Supreme Court. She won in the general election on November 6, 2018.
Clement was appointed by Republican Governor Rick Snyder in 2017.[1] She then won a 2018 nonpartisan election to serve a term on the Michigan Supreme Court. To read more about judicial selection in Michigan, click here.
On November 21, 2022, the court elected Clement as Chief Justice.[2]
Clement resigned from the Michigan Supreme Court on April 14, 2025 to accept a position as President of the National Center for State Courts (NCSC).[3] To learn more about this vacancy, click here.
In 2020, Ballotpedia published Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship, a study examining the partisan affiliation of all state supreme court justices in the country. As part of this study, we assigned each justice a Confidence Score describing our confidence in the degree of partisanship exhibited by the justices' past partisan behavior, before they joined the court.[4] Clement received a confidence score of Strong Republican.[5] Click here to read more about this study.
The Michigan Supreme Court is officially nonpartisan, but candidates were nominated to the ballot by party convention. Clements was nominated by the Republican Party.[6]
Biography
Clement received her bachelor's degree from Michigan State University and her J.D. from MSU College of Law.[1] Before her nomination to the Michigan Supreme Court in 2017, Clement was chief legal counsel to Gov. Rick Snyder and had previously served as deputy chief of staff in the executive office and deputy legal counsel. She also previously worked in the Michigan Senate Majority Policy Office, as an attorney at Clement Law PLLC, and as legal counsel in the Michigan Senate.[1]
Elections
2018
- See also: Michigan Supreme Court elections, 2018
Although the general election was officially nonpartisan, candidates were nominated to the ballot by party convention. Party affiliation listed below refers to the party that nominated each candidate.
General election
General election for Michigan Supreme Court (2 seats)
The following candidates ran in the general election for Michigan Supreme Court on November 6, 2018.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Elizabeth Clement (R) | 29.9 | 1,871,462 |
| ✔ |  | Megan Cavanagh (D) | 25.3 | 1,584,512 |
 | Kurtis Wilder (R) | 24.3 | 1,519,394 | |
 | Samuel Bagenstos (D) | 11.5 | 717,062 | |
 | Kerry Lee Morgan (L) | 5.8 | 360,858 | |
 | Doug Dern (Natural Law Party) | 3.3 | 209,103 | |
| Total votes: 6,262,391 | |||
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Analysis
Ballotpedia Courts: State partisanship (2020)
Last updated: June 15, 2020
In 2020, Ballotpedia published Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship, a study examining the partisan affiliation of all state supreme court justices in the country as of June 15, 2020.
The study presented Confidence Scores that represented our confidence in each justice's degree of partisan affiliation. This was not a measure of where a justice fell on an ideological spectrum, but rather a measure of how much confidence we had that a justice was or had been affiliated with a political party. The scores were based on seven factors, including but not limited to party registration.[7]
The five resulting categories of Confidence Scores were:
- Strong Democrat
- Mild Democrat
- Indeterminate[8]
- Mild Republican
- Strong Republican
This justice's Confidence Score, as well as the factors contributing to that score, is presented below. The information below was current as of June 2020.
Elizabeth
Clement
Michigan
- Partisan Confidence Score:
Strong Republican - Judicial Selection Method:
Elected - Key Factors:
- Held political office as a Republican
- Was a registered Republican before 2020
- Received donations from Republican-affiliated individuals or organizations
Partisan Profile
Details:
Clement served as Chief Legal Counsel to Governor Rick Snyder (R). She was a registered Republican prior to 2020. Clement received donations from organizations that regularly donate to Republican candidates, including the Michigan Republican Party. She was appointed by Gov. Snyder (R). At the time of her appointment, Michigan was a Republican trifecta.
State supreme court judicial selection in Michigan
- See also: Judicial selection in Michigan
The seven justices of the Michigan Supreme Court are chosen by the Michigan method in which a partisan nomination is followed by nonpartisan elections.[9] Incumbent judges seeking re-election may file an affidavit of candidacy requesting to be placed on the ballot, while non-incumbent candidates must either file a nominating petition or obtain a partisan nomination at a party convention. Incumbency is noted on the ballot, though party affiliation is not. Judges serve eight-year terms and must be re-elected if they wish to remain on the court.[10]
Qualifications
To be elected to the supreme court, a judge must:
- be a qualified elector;
- be licensed to practice law in the state;
- have at least five years of law practice experience;
- be under the age of 70.[10]
Chief justice
The chief justice of the court is elected by his or her fellow justices and serves a two-year term[10]
Vacancies
In the event of a midterm vacancy, the governor appoints a temporary replacement to serve until the next general election. At the governor's request, the state bar's standing committee on judicial qualifications interviews, evaluates, and rates all candidates, submitting a confidential report to the governor. However, the governor is not required to request candidates from the committee, nor is the governor bound by the committee's evaluations.[10]
The map below highlights how vacancies are filled in state supreme courts across the country.
See also
External links
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Personal |
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Office of Governor Rick Snyder, "Gov. Rick Snyder appoints Elizabeth Clement to Michigan Supreme Court, announces new chief legal counsel and senior counsel," November 17, 2017
- ↑ Michigan Courts, "Supreme Court Unanimously Elects Justice Elizabeth Clement as Chief Justice," accessed December 2, 2022
- ↑ National Center for State Courts (NCSC), "National Center for State Courts appoints Elizabeth Clement as next president," February 19, 2025
- ↑ We calculated confidence scores by collecting several data points such as party registration, donations, and previous political campaigns.
- ↑ The five possible confidence scores were: Strong Democrat, Mild Democrat, Indeterminate, Mild Republican, and Strong Republican.
- ↑ mlive.com, "6 compete for 2 seats on Michigan Supreme Court," October 16, 2018
- ↑ The seven factors were party registration, donations made to partisan candidates, donations made to political parties, donations received from political parties or bodies with clear political affiliation, participation in political campaigns, the partisanship of the body responsible for appointing the justice, and state trifecta status when the justice joined the court.
- ↑ An Indeterminate score indicates that there is either not enough information about the justice’s partisan affiliations or that our research found conflicting partisan affiliations.
- ↑ American Judicature Society, "Methods of Judicial Selection: Michigan," archived October 2, 2014
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 National Center for State Courts, "Methods of Judicial Selection," accessed August 27, 2021
Federal courts:
Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals • U.S. District Court: Eastern District of Michigan, Western District of Michigan • U.S. Bankruptcy Court: Eastern District of Michigan, Western District of Michigan
State courts:
Michigan Supreme Court • Michigan Court of Appeals • Michigan Circuit Court • Michigan Court of Claims • Michigan District Courts • Michigan Municipal Courts • Michigan Probate Courts
State resources:
Courts in Michigan • Michigan judicial elections • Judicial selection in Michigan
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