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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Minnesota Supreme Court / Joined 2008 / Active

Christopher J. Dietzen

Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court

Christopher J. Dietzen is a Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, serving since 2008. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1947 · age 79
Tenure: Since 2008 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2008	Minnesota Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Gonzaga University

Judicial Record

In our data, Dietzen authored 130 published opinions for the court (2008–2016), plus 29 dissents and 33 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Silvernail (194 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. 154 of these were attributed to Dietzen 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
2013	State v. Silvernail· Concurrence†	831 N.W.2d 594	194
2011	State v. Diede· Dissent†	795 N.W.2d 836	184
2012	Riley v. State†	819 N.W.2d 162	183
2010	State v. Al-Naseer· Dissent†	788 N.W.2d 469	181
2009	Valspar Refinish, Inc. v. Gaylord's, Inc.	764 N.W.2d 359	163
2012	Caldas v. Affordable Granite & Stone, Inc.†	820 N.W.2d 826	158
2014	State v. Vang†	847 N.W.2d 248	135
2010	Riverview Muir Doran, LLC v. JADT Development Group, LLC†	790 N.W.2d 167	125
2014	Laura L. Walsh v. U.S. Bank, N.A.· Concurrence†	851 N.W.2d 598	117
2013	State v. Nicks· Dissent†	831 N.W.2d 493	99
2011	State v. Koppi· Dissent†	798 N.W.2d 358	97
2010	Gassler v. State· Concurrence†	787 N.W.2d 575	97
2012	Staab v. Diocese of St. Cloud†	813 N.W.2d 68	90
2013	Andersen v. State†	830 N.W.2d 1	88
2009	State v. Martin	773 N.W.2d 89	87

Showing the 15 most-cited of 192 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 is Christopher J. Dietzen on?: Christopher J. Dietzen is 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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18 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).