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 2009 / Former Justice

Glen A. Severson

Justice, South Dakota Supreme Court

Glen A. Severson was a Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2009. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1949 · age 77
Tenure: 2009 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2009	South Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of South Dakota
University of South Dakota

Judicial Record

In our data, Severson authored 179 published opinions for the court (1994–2019), plus 10 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Bertelsen v. Allstate Insurance Co. (56 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. 168 of these were attributed to Severson 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
2011	Bertelsen v. Allstate Insurance Co.†	2011 S.D. 13	56
2010	State v. Brim†	2010 S.D. 74	50
2010	Janis v. Nash Finch Co.	2010 SD 27	40
2010	Bowes Construction, Inc. v. South Dakota Department of Transportation†	2010 S.D. 99	37
2013	Thurman v. Cuna Mutual Insurance Society†	2013 SD 63	35
2010	In Re the Guardianship of S.M.N.	2010 SD 31	32
2009	Monette v. Weber	2009 SD 77	32
2009	State v. Johnson	2009 SD 67	32
2018	Hanson v. Big Stone Therapies, Inc.†	2018 SD 60	31
2010	Stockwell v. Stockwell†	2010 S.D. 79	31
2015	State v. Birdshead· Concurrence†	2015 SD 77	30
2015	Dowling Family Partnership v. Midland Farms, LLC†	2015 SD 50	28
2013	Brandt v. County of Pennington†	2013 S.D. 22	28
1995	State v. Wilkins	536 N.W.2d 97	28
2014	Hayes v. Rosenbaum Signs & Outdoor Advertising, Inc.†	2014 SD 64	27

Showing the 15 most-cited of 196 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 Glen A. Severson on?: Glen A. Severson 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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17 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).