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 1979 / Served to 1994

Frank E. Henderson

Justice, South Dakota Supreme Court

Frank E. Henderson was a Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1979. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1928–2012
Tenure: 1979–1994 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	South Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Henderson authored 467 published opinions for the court (1979–1994), plus 296 dissents and 501 concurrences. Most cited: Permann v. South Dakota Department of Labor, Unemployment Insurance Division (281 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. 844 of these were attributed to Henderson 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
1987	Permann v. South Dakota Department of Labor, Unemployment Insurance Division· Concurrence†	411 N.W.2d 113	281
1987	Bego v. Gordon· Dissent†	407 N.W.2d 801	162
1987	Groseth International, Inc. v. Tenneco, Inc.· Concurrence†	410 N.W.2d 159	156
1981	Herndon v. Herndon· Concurrence†	305 N.W.2d 917	129
1983	Black Hills Jewelry Manufacturing Co. v. Felco Jewel Industries, Inc.	336 N.W.2d 153	126
1989	Pickering v. Pickering· Concurrence†	434 N.W.2d 758	119
1984	Daugaard v. Baltic Cooperative Building Supply Ass'n	349 N.W.2d 419	116
1980	Hanks v. Hanks· Concurrence†	296 N.W.2d 523	101
1985	Gross v. Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Co.	361 N.W.2d 259	96
1984	Saint-Pierre v. Saint-Pierre· Concurrence†	357 N.W.2d 250	94
1986	State v. Rufener· Dissent†	392 N.W.2d 424	93
1986	State v. Dokken· Concurrence†	385 N.W.2d 493	93
1991	Dahl v. Sittner	474 N.W.2d 897	90
1994	Poppen v. Walker· Concurrence†	520 N.W.2d 238	89
1987	State v. Michalek· Concurrence†	407 N.W.2d 815	89

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,264 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 Frank E. Henderson on?: Frank E. Henderson 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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15 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).