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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Minnesota Supreme Court / Joined 1961 / Served to 1982

James C. Otis

Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court

James C. Otis was a Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1961. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1912–1993
Tenure: 1961–1982 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1961	Minnesota Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Yale University

Judicial Record

In our data, Otis authored 503 published opinions for the court (1961–1983), plus 166 dissents and 50 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Spreigl (368 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. 319 of these were attributed to Otis 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
1965	State v. Spreigl	139 N.W.2d 167	368
1977	Reserve Mining Co. v. Herbst	256 N.W.2d 808	328
1962	Spanel v. Mounds View School District No. 621	264 Minn. 279	235
1977	Pacific Indemnity Co. v. Thompson-Yaeger, Inc.· Dissent†	260 N.W.2d 548	184
1967	State v. Billstrom	149 N.W.2d 281	160
1980	State v. Austin· Dissent†	295 N.W.2d 246	156
1982	Marriage of Erlandson v. Erlandson· Dissent†	318 N.W.2d 36	135
1981	State v. Ulvinen	313 N.W.2d 425	133
1979	State v. Brouillette· Dissent†	286 N.W.2d 702	133
1982	Cairl v. State	323 N.W.2d 20	123
1982	Ellis v. Minneapolis Commission on Civil Rights	319 N.W.2d 702	109
1977	Tolbert v. Gerber Industries, Inc.	255 N.W.2d 362	106
1966	Balts v. Balts	142 N.W.2d 66	105
1980	Anderson Ex Rel. Anderson v. Stream· Dissent†	295 N.W.2d 595	100
1981	Grouse v. Group Health Plan, Inc.	306 N.W.2d 114	95

Showing the 15 most-cited of 719 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 James C. Otis on?: James C. Otis 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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21 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).