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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Minnesota Supreme Court / Joined 1990 / Served to 1998

Esther Tomljanovich

Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court

Esther Tomljanovich was a Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1990. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1931 · age 95
Tenure: 1990–1998 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1990	Minnesota Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Tomljanovich authored 136 published opinions for the court (1990–1998), plus 31 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: Fabio v. Bellomo (547 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. 57 of these were attributed to Tomljanovich 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
1993	Fabio v. Bellomo	504 N.W.2d 758	547
1994	State v. Scales· Concurrence†	518 N.W.2d 587	174
1997	State v. Juarez	572 N.W.2d 286	141
1994	State v. Post· Concurrence†	512 N.W.2d 99	131
1998	Lefto v. Hoggsbreath Enterprises, Inc.· Dissent†	581 N.W.2d 855	117
1992	State v. Dickerson	481 N.W.2d 840	111
1995	State v. Ford	539 N.W.2d 214	110
1994	State Ex Rel. Beaulieu v. City of Mounds View	518 N.W.2d 567	110
1998	Lake v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.· Dissent†	582 N.W.2d 231	108
1994	Board of Regents v. Royal Insurance Co. of America· Dissent†	517 N.W.2d 888	105
1991	McDonnell v. Commissioner of Public Safety	473 N.W.2d 848	103
1997	In Re Welfare of G. (NMN) M.	560 N.W.2d 687	97
1997	Rainer v. State	566 N.W.2d 692	86
1997	Meadowbrook, Inc. v. Tower Insurance Co.	559 N.W.2d 411	86
1996	State v. Jones· Concurrence†	556 N.W.2d 903	86

Showing the 15 most-cited of 178 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 Esther Tomljanovich on?: Esther Tomljanovich 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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8 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).