How do judges of the Minnesota Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Minnesota Supreme Court / Joined 1967 / Served to 1986

C Donald Peterson

Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court

C Donald Peterson was a Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1967. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1918–1987
Tenure: 1967–1986 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1967	Minnesota Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Peterson authored 442 published opinions for the court (1967–1985), plus 93 dissents and 53 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Saldana (204 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. 221 of these were attributed to Peterson 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
1982	State v. Saldana· Concurrence†	324 N.W.2d 227	204
1985	Atwater Creamery Co. v. Western National Mutual Insurance Co.· Concurrence†	366 N.W.2d 271	194
1980	State v. Lothenbach	296 N.W.2d 854	192
1983	White v. Metropolitan Medical Center· Dissent†	332 N.W.2d 25	168
1973	Milkovich v. Saari· Dissent†	203 N.W.2d 408	157
1971	Baker v. Nelson	191 N.W.2d 185	150
1979	Haagenson v. National Farmers Union Property & Casualty Co.	277 N.W.2d 648	143
1980	State v. Pieschke	295 N.W.2d 580	133
1971	Springrose v. Willmore	192 N.W.2d 826	123
1985	State v. Fuller	374 N.W.2d 722	120
1977	Sherlock v. Stillwater Clinic· Dissent†	260 N.W.2d 169	110
1982	State v. Caldwell· Dissent†	322 N.W.2d 574	102
1983	Waseca Mutual Insurance Co. v. Noska	331 N.W.2d 917	100
1980	Frank's Nursery Sales, Inc. v. City of Roseville	295 N.W.2d 604	100
1980	Anderson Ex Rel. Anderson v. Stream· Dissent†	295 N.W.2d 595	100

Showing the 15 most-cited of 588 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 Minnesota Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was C Donald Peterson on?: C Donald Peterson was a Justice of the Minnesota 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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19 years on the Minnesota Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).