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 1973 / Served to 1985

Francis G. Dunn

Justice, South Dakota Supreme Court

Francis G. Dunn was a Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1973. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1913 · age 113
Tenure: 1973–1985 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1973	South Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Dunn authored 337 published opinions for the court (1963–1985), plus 63 dissents and 34 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Reiman (122 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. 144 of these were attributed to Dunn 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
1979	State v. Reiman· Concurrence†	284 N.W.2d 860	122
1977	Drier v. Perfection, Inc.	259 N.W.2d 496	103
1983	State v. Iron Shell	336 N.W.2d 372	75
1984	State v. Huber· Concurrence†	356 N.W.2d 468	74
1980	State v. Wilson	297 N.W.2d 477	73
1984	State v. Holland	346 N.W.2d 302	72
1975	State v. Best	232 N.W.2d 447	72
1981	Hunt v. Hunt· Concurrence†	309 N.W.2d 818	71
1978	Holforty v. Holforty	272 N.W.2d 810	70
1984	State v. Swallow	350 N.W.2d 606	65
1984	State v. Neville· Concurrence†	346 N.W.2d 425	64
1982	Durham v. Ciba-Geigy Corp.	315 N.W.2d 696	62
1975	Behrns v. Burke· Dissent†	229 N.W.2d 86	62
1974	Mueller v. Mueller	221 N.W.2d 39	62
1984	Arcon Construction Co. v. South Dakota Cement Plant	349 N.W.2d 407	61

Showing the 15 most-cited of 434 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 Francis G. Dunn on?: Francis G. Dunn 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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12 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).