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 1951 / Served to 1955

Boyd Leedom

Justice, South Dakota Supreme Court

Boyd Leedom was a Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1951. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1906 · age 120
Tenure: 1951–1955 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1951	South Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of South Dakota

Judicial Record

In our data, Leedom authored 41 published opinions for the court (1951–1955), plus 5 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Blow v. Lottman (45 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. 14 of these were attributed to Leedom 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
1953	Blow v. Lottman	59 N.W.2d 825	45
1955	Allen v. McLain	69 N.W.2d 390	38
1954	Davies v. Toms	63 N.W.2d 406	28
1953	State Ex Rel. Parker v. Jameson	61 N.W.2d 832	26
1952	Mehlum v. Nunda Cooperative Ass'n· Dissent†	56 N.W.2d 282	25
1953	Bogue v. Clay County	60 N.W.2d 218	21
1952	Espeland v. Green	54 N.W.2d 465	21
1955	State v. Dove	67 N.W.2d 917	20
1954	State v. Strauser†	75 S.D. 266	19
1954	Carlson v. City of Faith	67 N.W.2d 149	17
1954	State v. Willers	64 N.W.2d 810	17
1953	Winburn v. Vander Vorst	59 N.W.2d 819	17
1952	Tompkins v. Lutheran Welfare Society†	74 S.D. 286	16
1951	Boehrs v. Dewey County	48 N.W.2d 831	15
1953	Hoaas v. Hoaas· Concurrence†	59 N.W.2d 254	14

Showing the 15 most-cited of 47 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 Boyd Leedom on?: Boyd Leedom 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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4 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).