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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Minnesota Supreme Court / Joined 1972 / Served to 1985

John J. Todd

Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court

John J. Todd was a Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1972. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1927 · age 99
Tenure: 1972–1985 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1972	Minnesota Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Todd authored 422 published opinions for the court (1972–1985), plus 69 dissents and 33 concurrences. Most cited: A. J. Chromy Construction Co. v. Commercial Mechanical Services, Inc. (228 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. 165 of these were attributed to Todd 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
1977	A. J. Chromy Construction Co. v. Commercial Mechanical Services, Inc.	260 N.W.2d 579	228
1983	Schmidt v. Clothier· Concurrence†	338 N.W.2d 256	204
1983	White v. Metropolitan Medical Center	332 N.W.2d 25	168
1973	Milkovich v. Saari	203 N.W.2d 408	157
1984	Bilotta v. Kelley Co., Inc.· Concurrence†	346 N.W.2d 616	149
1976	Gruenhagen v. Larson	246 N.W.2d 565	139
1979	Cracraft v. City of St. Louis Park	279 N.W.2d 801	134
1985	Williams v. State	361 N.W.2d 840	133
1976	Prideaux v. State Dept. of Public Safety· Concurrence†	247 N.W.2d 385	131
1980	State v. Olkon	299 N.W.2d 89	113
1974	Rathbun v. WT Grant Company	219 N.W.2d 641	108
1978	State v. Carlson	267 N.W.2d 170	106
1977	Tolbert v. Gerber Industries, Inc.· Dissent†	255 N.W.2d 362	106
1977	Canadian Universal Insurance Co. v. Fire Watch, Inc.	258 N.W.2d 570	104
1979	Armstrong v. Mailand	284 N.W.2d 343	102

Showing the 15 most-cited of 524 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 J. Todd on?: John J. Todd 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).