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

James M. Doyle

Justice, South Dakota Supreme Court

James M. Doyle was a Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1971. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1893 · age 133
Tenure: 1971–1976 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

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

Judicial Record

In our data, Doyle authored 64 published opinions for the court (1972–1976), plus 6 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Behrns v. Burke (62 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. 19 of these were attributed to Doyle 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
1975	Behrns v. Burke	229 N.W.2d 86	62
1973	In re K.D.E†	87 S.D. 501	61
1975	State v. Shank & Bradley	226 N.W.2d 384	59
1975	Yadco, Inc. v. Yankton County	237 N.W.2d 665	52
1975	Board of Regents v. Carter	228 N.W.2d 621	47
1974	State v. Martinez	220 N.W.2d 530	40
1974	Alley v. Siepman	214 N.W.2d 7	39
1973	State v. Aschmeller	209 N.W.2d 369	36
1974	Aberdeen Ed. Ass'n v. Aberdeen Bd. of Ed., Ind. Sch. D.· Dissent†	215 N.W.2d 837	34
1975	Arbach v. Gruba	232 N.W.2d 842	31
1974	Anderson v. Lale	216 N.W.2d 152	30
1973	State v. Williamson	211 N.W.2d 182	28
1974	Cuppy v. Bunch	214 N.W.2d 786	27
1975	State v. Barr	232 N.W.2d 257	26
1972	State v. Rober	197 N.W.2d 707	23

Showing the 15 most-cited of 77 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 James M. Doyle on?: James M. Doyle 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).