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 1956 / Served to 1973

Charles S. Hanson

Justice, South Dakota Supreme Court

Charles S. Hanson was a Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1956. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1912 · age 114
Tenure: 1956–1973 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1956	South Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Education

South Dakota State University
University of South Dakota

Judicial Record

In our data, Hanson authored 197 published opinions for the court (1952–1978), plus 53 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: Wilson v. Great Northern Railway Company (469 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. 78 of these were attributed to Hanson 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
1968	Wilson v. Great Northern Railway Company· Dissent†	157 N.W.2d 19	469
1972	Haugan v. Home Indemnity Company	197 N.W.2d 18	88
1977	State v. Bad Heart Bull	257 N.W.2d 715	82
1959	Hoekstra v. Helgeland· Dissent†	98 N.W.2d 669	82
1966	State v. McCreary· Dissent†	142 N.W.2d 240	79
1968	Hannahs v. Noah· Dissent†	158 N.W.2d 678	71
1971	Mulder v. Tague	186 N.W.2d 884	70
1963	Dunker v. Brown County Board of Education· Dissent†	121 N.W.2d 10	61
1960	Imel v. Metz†	78 S.D. 212	59
1966	Conway v. Humbert· Concurrence†	145 N.W.2d 524	56
1960	In Re Metz'Estate	100 N.W.2d 393	56
1972	Hughes-Johnson Co. v. Dakota Midland Hospital	195 N.W.2d 519	55
1968	State v. Thundershield	160 N.W.2d 408	53
1957	Hinkle v. Hargens	81 N.W.2d 888	53
1966	Hurley v. State	143 N.W.2d 722	52

Showing the 15 most-cited of 258 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 Charles S. Hanson on?: Charles S. Hanson 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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17 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).