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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Minnesota Supreme Court / Joined 1981 / Served to 1994

John E. Simonett

Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court

John E. Simonett was a Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1981. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1924–2011
Tenure: 1981–1994 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1981	Minnesota Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Simonett authored 360 published opinions for the court (1980–1994), plus 36 dissents and 54 concurrences. Most cited: State Ex Rel. Cooper v. French (632 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. 127 of these were attributed to Simonett 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
1990	State Ex Rel. Cooper v. French· Concurrence†	460 N.W.2d 2	632
1983	Pine River State Bank v. Mettille	333 N.W.2d 622	418
1982	Miller v. Shugart	316 N.W.2d 729	303
1986	Lewis v. Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States· Concurrence†	389 N.W.2d 876	289
1982	Hoff v. Kempton	317 N.W.2d 361	207
1985	Atwater Creamery Co. v. Western National Mutual Insurance Co.· Concurrence†	366 N.W.2d 271	194
1992	Pletan v. Gaines	494 N.W.2d 38	156
1986	Florenzano v. Olson· Concurrence†	387 N.W.2d 168	154
1984	Bilotta v. Kelley Co., Inc.· Concurrence†	346 N.W.2d 616	149
1981	Honn v. City of Coon Rapids	313 N.W.2d 409	144
1991	State v. Russell· Concurrence†	477 N.W.2d 886	143
1990	Uselman v. Uselman· Concurrence†	464 N.W.2d 130	138
1984	Hengemuhle v. Long Prairie Jaycees	358 N.W.2d 54	121
1990	Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co. v. Travelers Indemnity Co.· Dissent†	457 N.W.2d 175	114
1992	State v. Dickerson· Dissent†	481 N.W.2d 840	111

Showing the 15 most-cited of 450 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 John E. Simonett on?: John E. Simonett 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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13 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).