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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Minnesota Supreme Court / Joined 1980 / Served to 1989

Douglas K. Amdahl

Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court

Douglas K. Amdahl was a Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1980. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1919–2010
Tenure: 1980–1989 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	Minnesota Supreme Court	–	–

Education

William Mitchell College of Law

Judicial Record

In our data, Amdahl authored 559 published opinions for the court (1976–1989), plus 18 dissents and 12 concurrences. Most cited: Hubbard v. United Press International, Inc. (442 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. 190 of these were attributed to Amdahl 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
1983	Hubbard v. United Press International, Inc.	330 N.W.2d 428	442
1986	Lewis v. Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States	389 N.W.2d 876	289
1981	State v. Kindem	313 N.W.2d 6	267
1986	Moylan v. Moylan	384 N.W.2d 859	229
1988	Marriage of Sefkow v. Sefkow	427 N.W.2d 203	211
1983	Schmidt v. Clothier· Concurrence†	338 N.W.2d 256	204
1986	Henning Nelson Construction Co. v. Fireman's Fund American Life Insurance Co.	383 N.W.2d 645	189
1986	Tuma v. Commissioner of Economic Security	386 N.W.2d 702	179
1982	State v. Trog	323 N.W.2d 28	160
1983	State v. Trott· Dissent†	338 N.W.2d 248	145
1984	Cable Communications Board v. Nor-West Cable Communications Partnership	356 N.W.2d 658	142
1982	State v. Olson	325 N.W.2d 13	141
1982	Marriage of Erlandson v. Erlandson	318 N.W.2d 36	135
1987	Continental Western Insurance Co. v. Klug	415 N.W.2d 876	133
1987	Gates v. State	398 N.W.2d 558	133

Showing the 15 most-cited of 589 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 Douglas K. Amdahl on?: Douglas K. Amdahl 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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9 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).