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 1974 / Served to 1992

J. Philip Johnson

Justice, North Dakota Supreme Court

J. Philip Johnson was a Justice of the North Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1974. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1938 · age 88
Tenure: 1974–1992 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1974	North Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of North Dakota
University of North Dakota

Judicial Record

In our data, Johnson authored 38 published opinions for the court (1974–1992), plus 3 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: Kitto v. Minot Park District (126 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. 11 of these were attributed to Johnson 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
1974	Kitto v. Minot Park District	224 N.W.2d 795	126
1992	Sellie v. North Dakota Insurance Guaranty Ass'n	494 N.W.2d 151	47
1992	State v. Purdy	491 N.W.2d 402	40
1974	Farmers Union Grain Terminal Ass'n v. Nelson	223 N.W.2d 494	38
1992	Delzer v. Winn· Dissent†	491 N.W.2d 741	36
1974	Dangerfield v. Markel	222 N.W.2d 373	32
1992	Western Gas Resources, Inc. v. Heitkamp	489 N.W.2d 869	31
1992	Cooperative Power Association v. Westinghouse Elec. Corp.	493 N.W.2d 661	30
1974	Small v. Burleigh County· Dissent†	225 N.W.2d 295	30
1992	City of Fargo v. Stensland	492 N.W.2d 591	29
1992	Catlin v. Catlin	494 N.W.2d 581	28
1974	Rolfstad, Winkjer, Suess, McKennett & Kaiser, P.C. v. Hanson	221 N.W.2d 734	24
1992	Schestler v. Schestler	486 N.W.2d 509	21
1974	Colgate-Palmolive Company v. Dorgan	225 N.W.2d 278	20
1992	Matter of Estate of Otto	494 N.W.2d 169	19

Showing the 15 most-cited of 47 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 J. Philip Johnson on?: J. Philip Johnson 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

18 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).