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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Minnesota Supreme Court / Joined 1998 / Served to 2002

Joan Ericksen Lancaster

Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court

Joan Ericksen Lancaster was a Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1998. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1954 · age 72
Tenure: 1998–2002 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1998	Minnesota Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Lancaster authored 73 published opinions for the court (1998–2002), plus 11 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: Star Centers, Inc. v. Faegre & Benson, L.L.P. (183 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. 27 of these were attributed to Lancaster 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
2002	Star Centers, Inc. v. Faegre & Benson, L.L.P.	644 N.W.2d 72	183
2001	State v. Kuhnau· Dissent†	622 N.W.2d 552	128
1999	Boutin v. LaFleur· Dissent†	591 N.W.2d 711	99
2000	State v. Britton	604 N.W.2d 84	90
1999	In Re Linehan· Concurrence†	594 N.W.2d 867	90
2001	State v. Crowsbreast	629 N.W.2d 433	79
2002	Martin Ex Rel. Hoff v. City of Rochester· Dissent†	642 N.W.2d 1	73
2001	State v. Henderson	620 N.W.2d 688	73
1998	State v. Lahue	585 N.W.2d 785	72
2001	State v. Vick	632 N.W.2d 676	70
2002	Putz v. Putz	645 N.W.2d 343	67
2002	State v. Colvin	645 N.W.2d 449	64
2001	Funchess v. Cecil Newman Corp.	632 N.W.2d 666	62
2001	Genin v. 1996 Mercury Marquis, VIN No. 2MEBP95F9CX644211, License No. MN 225 NSG†	622 N.W.2d 114	56
2002	Marriage of Antone v. Antone	645 N.W.2d 96	55

Showing the 15 most-cited of 89 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 Joan Ericksen Lancaster on?: Joan Ericksen Lancaster 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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4 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).