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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Minnesota Supreme Court / Joined 1972 / Served to 1977

Harry Hunter MacLaughlin

Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court

Harry Hunter MacLaughlin was a Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1972. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1927–2005
Tenure: 1972–1977 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1972	Minnesota Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, MacLaughlin authored 26 published opinions for the court (1972–1977), plus 11 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: Schwartz v. Talmo (63 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 MacLaughlin 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
1973	Schwartz v. Talmo· Dissent†	205 N.W.2d 318	63
1977	Frey v. Montgomery Ward & Co., Inc.†	258 N.W.2d 782	58
1974	Sullivan v. Credit River Township†	217 N.W.2d 502	46
1976	State v. Parker· Concurrence†	309 Minn. 78	45
1975	State v. Prudhomme†	228 N.W.2d 243	44
1977	Minnesota Public Interest Research Group v. White Bear Rod & Gun Club†	257 N.W.2d 762	42
1976	Travelers Indemnity Co. v. Vaccari†	310 Minn. 97	42
1976	Spitzack v. Schumacher†	241 N.W.2d 641	39
1975	International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local No. 320 v. City of Minneapolis†	302 Minn. 410	35
1977	Price v. Amdal†	256 N.W.2d 461	33
1976	Minn. State Bd. of Health v. City of Brainerd†	241 N.W.2d 624	31
1977	O'LAUGHLIN v. Minnesota Natural Gas Co.· Concurrence†	253 N.W.2d 826	29
1975	Hampton v. Hampton· Concurrence†	229 N.W.2d 139	29
1974	Tollefson v. American Family Insurance Co.· Concurrence†	226 N.W.2d 280	27
1975	Bell v. Gannaway· Dissent†	227 N.W.2d 797	23

Showing the 15 most-cited of 45 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 Minnesota Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Harry Hunter MacLaughlin on?: Harry Hunter MacLaughlin was a Justice of the Minnesota 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 Minnesota Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).