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 1971 / Served to 1976

Fred R. Winans

Justice, South Dakota Supreme Court

Fred R. Winans was a Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1971. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1904 · age 122
Tenure: 1971–1976 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1971	South Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Winans authored 109 published opinions for the court (1966–1978), plus 16 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Opperman (172 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. 34 of these were attributed to Winans 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
1976	State v. Opperman	247 N.W.2d 673	172
1976	Shaffer v. Honeywell, Inc.	249 N.W.2d 251	170
1973	Engberg v. Ford Motor Company	205 N.W.2d 104	95
1972	Haugan v. Home Indemnity Company· Dissent†	197 N.W.2d 18	88
1977	State v. Winckler	260 N.W.2d 356	87
1974	Kneip v. Herseth· Dissent†	214 N.W.2d 93	78
1975	State v. Opperman	228 N.W.2d 152	53
1976	People in Interest of DK· Dissent†	245 N.W.2d 644	51
1976	Piper v. Neighborhood Youth Corps.	241 N.W.2d 868	50
1975	Ehlers v. Chrysler Motor Corporation	226 N.W.2d 157	50
1975	State v. Minkel	230 N.W.2d 233	47
1976	Scholl v. Tallman	247 N.W.2d 490	45
1975	Pochop v. Pochop	233 N.W.2d 806	43
1975	Crescent Electric Supply Co. v. Nerison	232 N.W.2d 76	43
1975	Swenson v. Chevron Chemical Company	234 N.W.2d 38	42

Showing the 15 most-cited of 128 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 Fred R. Winans on?: Fred R. Winans 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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5 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).