How do judges of the South Dakota Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

South Dakota Supreme Court / Joined 1955 / Served to 1971

Alex Rentto

Justice, South Dakota Supreme Court

Alex Rentto was a Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1955. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1905 · age 121
Tenure: 1955–1971 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1955	South Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Education

South Dakota State University

Judicial Record

In our data, Rentto authored 172 published opinions for the court (1955–1975), plus 17 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: In Re Estate of Hobelsberger (328 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. 35 of these were attributed to Rentto 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
1970	In Re Estate of Hobelsberger	181 N.W.2d 455	328
1961	Darnall v. State· Dissent†	108 N.W.2d 201	70
1965	State v. Johnson	139 N.W.2d 232	68
1963	Dunker v. Brown County Board of Education	121 N.W.2d 10	61
1958	Beka v. Lithium Corporation of America	92 N.W.2d 156	57
1964	Hilde v. Flood	130 N.W.2d 100	55
1968	Clem v. City of Yankton	160 N.W.2d 125	53
1957	Hinkle v. Hargens· Dissent†	81 N.W.2d 888	53
1970	City of Rapid City v. Hoogterp	179 N.W.2d 15	50
1969	Chipperfield v. Woessner	166 N.W.2d 727	47
1959	Lang v. Burns	97 N.W.2d 863	46
1965	State Automobile Casualty Underwriters v. Ruotsalainen	136 N.W.2d 884	43
1959	Baker v. Jewell	96 N.W.2d 299	43
1960	Beatty v. Depue	103 N.W.2d 187	42
1971	Geo. A. Clark & Son, Inc. v. Nold	185 N.W.2d 677	40

Showing the 15 most-cited of 195 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 South Dakota Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Alex Rentto on?: Alex Rentto was a Justice of the South Dakota 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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16 years on the South Dakota Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).