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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Court of Appeals of Minnesota / Joined 2008 / Active

Francis J. Connolly

Judge, Court of Appeals of Minnesota

Francis J. Connolly is a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Minnesota, serving since 2008. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2008 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2008	Court of Appeals of Minnesota	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Connolly authored 72 published opinions for the court (2008–2019), plus 1 dissent and 3 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Delk (57 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. 45 of these were attributed to Connolly 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
2010	State v. Delk	781 N.W.2d 426	57
2011	Zinter v. University of Minnesota†	799 N.W.2d 243	27
2008	Mell v. Commissioner of Public Safety	757 N.W.2d 702	24
2013	State v. McCormick· Concurrence†	835 N.W.2d 498	22
2010	State v. McClenton	781 N.W.2d 181	20
2012	State v. Ness†	819 N.W.2d 219	14
2010	In Re Excelsior Energy, Inc.	782 N.W.2d 282	13
2015	In re the Matter of: Cindy Jean Oberg obo minor child v. Gregory Brian Bradley†	868 N.W.2d 62	11
2010	Frontier Insurance Co. v. Frontline Processing Corp.	788 N.W.2d 917	10
2009	State v. Paige	765 N.W.2d 134	10
2015	Angeles v. Medtronic, Inc.†	863 N.W.2d 404	9
2011	Bee Yang v. State†	805 N.W.2d 921	9
2011	State v. Rottelo†	798 N.W.2d 92	9
2009	J.W. ex rel. B.R.W. v. 287 Intermediate District†	761 N.W.2d 896	9
2008	Siewert v. Northern States Power Co.	757 N.W.2d 909	9

Showing the 15 most-cited of 76 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 Court of Appeals of Minnesota reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court is Francis J. Connolly on?: Francis J. Connolly is a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Minnesota.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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18 years on the Court of Appeals of Minnesota. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).