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 1931 / Served to 1970

Everett D. Roberts

Justice, South Dakota Supreme Court

Everett D. Roberts was a Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1931. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1890 · age 136
Tenure: 1931–1970 · 39 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1931	South Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of South Dakota

Judicial Record

In our data, Roberts authored 481 published opinions for the court (1931–1970), plus 46 dissents and 18 concurrences. Most cited: Waggoner v. Midwestern Development, Inc. (96 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. 79 of these were attributed to Roberts 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
1967	Waggoner v. Midwestern Development, Inc.	154 N.W.2d 803	96
1936	Keith v. Willers Truck Service	266 N.W. 256	75
1961	Darnall v. State· Dissent†	108 N.W.2d 201	70
1951	Antonen v. Swanson	48 N.W.2d 161	64
1962	Albers v. Ottenbacher	116 N.W.2d 529	57
1966	Conway v. Humbert	145 N.W.2d 524	56
1968	State v. Thundershield· Dissent†	160 N.W.2d 408	53
1966	Hurley v. State· Dissent†	143 N.W.2d 722	52
1949	Peters v. Hoisington	37 N.W.2d 410	50
1939	Elfring v. Paterson	285 N.W. 443	48
1947	State v. Sinnott	30 N.W.2d 455	47
1946	McCleod v. Tri-State Milling Co.	24 N.W.2d 485	47
1970	State v. Williams	173 N.W.2d 889	46
1957	Schmeling v. Jorgensen· Dissent†	84 N.W.2d 558	45
1959	Hyde v. Hyde	99 N.W.2d 788	44

Showing the 15 most-cited of 545 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 Everett D. Roberts on?: Everett D. Roberts 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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39 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).