How do judges of the North Dakota Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

North Dakota Supreme Court / Joined 1983 / Served to 1991

Herman Fredrick Gierke III

Justice, North Dakota Supreme Court

Herman Fredrick Gierke III was a Justice of the North Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1983. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1943 · age 83
Tenure: 1983–1991 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	North Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of North Dakota
University of North Dakota

Judicial Record

In our data, Gierke authored 353 published opinions for the court (1983–1991), plus 3 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: Hanson v. Williams County (90 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. 49 of these were attributed to Gierke 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
1986	Hanson v. Williams County	389 N.W.2d 319	90
1984	State v. Kringstad	353 N.W.2d 302	75
1991	Peterson v. Zerr	477 N.W.2d 230	71
1988	State v. Ringquist	433 N.W.2d 207	71
1986	State v. Micko	393 N.W.2d 741	63
1987	State v. Schimmel	409 N.W.2d 335	60
1985	Olson v. Job Service North Dakota	379 N.W.2d 285	57
1989	Osland v. Osland	442 N.W.2d 907	56
1988	Fleck v. Fleck	427 N.W.2d 355	55
1985	Shark v. Thompson	373 N.W.2d 859	53
1985	Williams County Social Services Board v. Falcon	367 N.W.2d 170	53
1989	Butz v. Werner	438 N.W.2d 509	52
1991	Schumacher v. Schumacher	469 N.W.2d 793	51
1988	Hopkins v. McBane	427 N.W.2d 85	51
1985	Binstock v. Tschider	374 N.W.2d 81	49

Showing the 15 most-cited of 362 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 North Dakota Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Herman Fredrick Gierke III on?: Herman Fredrick Gierke III was a Justice of the North 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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8 years on the North Dakota Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).