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 1977 / Served to 1979

Donald James Porter

Justice, South Dakota Supreme Court

Donald James Porter was a Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1921–2003
Tenure: 1977–1979 · 2 yrs
Education: University of South Dakota 1942

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	South Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of South Dakota

B.S.

1942

Judicial Record

In our data, Porter authored 17 published opinions for the court (1977–1979), plus 10 dissents and 17 concurrences. Most cited: Drier v. Perfection, Inc. (103 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. 44 of these were attributed to Porter 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
1977	Drier v. Perfection, Inc.· Concurrence†	259 N.W.2d 496	103
1978	Stenholtz v. Modica· Dissent†	264 N.W.2d 514	57
1977	Peterson v. State†	261 N.W.2d 405	51
1978	Larson v. Locken· Dissent†	262 N.W.2d 752	48
1977	State v. Hartman· Concurrence†	256 N.W.2d 131	46
1978	State v. Parker· Concurrence†	263 N.W.2d 679	36
1977	Collins v. Wakonda Independent School District 1†	252 N.W.2d 646	35
1978	State v. Pieschke· Concurrence†	262 N.W.2d 40	31
1977	Grandpre v. Northwestern Insurance Life Insurance Co.· Dissent†	261 N.W.2d 804	28
1977	State v. Beene†	257 N.W.2d 589	28
1977	State v. Herman· Concurrence†	253 N.W.2d 454	25
1978	State v. Boardman· Concurrence†	264 N.W.2d 503	22
1978	Fjerstad v. Knutson†	271 N.W.2d 8	20
1978	State v. Waubun Nuwi Nini ( 11671)†	262 N.W.2d 758	20
1979	Robinson v. Mudlin· Dissent†	273 N.W.2d 753	19

Showing the 15 most-cited of 44 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 Donald James Porter on?: Donald James Porter 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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2 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).