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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Minnesota Supreme Court / Joined 2010 / Active

David Stras

Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court

David Stras is a Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, serving since 2010. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1974 · age 52
Tenure: Since 2010 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2010	Minnesota Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Kansas

Judicial Record

In our data, Stras authored 136 published opinions for the court (2010–2017), plus 35 dissents and 41 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Brooks (216 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. 211 of these were attributed to Stras 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. Brooks· Concurrence†	838 N.W.2d 563	216
2013	State v. Silvernail· Concurrence†	831 N.W.2d 594	194
2011	State v. Diede· Dissent†	795 N.W.2d 836	184
2014	State v. Vang· Concurrence†	847 N.W.2d 248	135
2017	State v. Thonesavanh†	904 N.W.2d 432	107
2013	Christianson v. Henke· Dissent†	831 N.W.2d 532	99
2011	State v. Koppi†	798 N.W.2d 358	97
2012	Sanchez v. State· Concurrence†	816 N.W.2d 550	92
2013	Midwest Family Mutual Insurance Co. v. Wolters· Concurrence†	831 N.W.2d 628	91
2012	State v. Ortega†	813 N.W.2d 86	86
2010	Larson v. State†	790 N.W.2d 700	77
2016	State of Minnesota v. Heather Leann Horst†	880 N.W.2d 24	76
2012	State v. Pratt· Concurrence†	813 N.W.2d 868	69
2014	State v. Nelson†	842 N.W.2d 433	65
2011	State v. Hill†	801 N.W.2d 646	65

Showing the 15 most-cited of 212 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 David Stras on?: David Stras 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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16 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).