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 1978 / Served to 1986

Jon Fosheim

Justice, South Dakota Supreme Court

Jon Fosheim was a Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1978. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1923 · age 103
Tenure: 1978–1986 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1978	South Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Fosheim authored 293 published opinions for the court (1961–1987), plus 61 dissents and 46 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Reiman (122 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. 141 of these were attributed to Fosheim 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
1979	State v. Reiman	284 N.W.2d 860	122
1985	State v. Logue· Dissent†	372 N.W.2d 151	119
1982	State v. Heumiller	317 N.W.2d 126	99
1986	State v. Rufener	392 N.W.2d 424	93
1986	State v. Dokken· Concurrence†	385 N.W.2d 493	93
1985	State v. Means	363 N.W.2d 565	93
1986	Meyerink v. Northwestern Public Service Co.	391 N.W.2d 180	84
1980	State v. McBride· Concurrence†	296 N.W.2d 551	83
1986	Magbuhat v. Kovarik	382 N.W.2d 43	77
1982	Walz v. City of Hudson	327 N.W.2d 120	77
1985	State v. Reutter· Concurrence†	374 N.W.2d 617	71
1972	Degen v. Bayman	200 N.W.2d 134	70
1983	State v. Dace	333 N.W.2d 812	69
1986	First National Bank of Minneapolis v. Kehn Ranch, Inc.	394 N.W.2d 709	66
1983	State v. Wedemann	339 N.W.2d 112	65

Showing the 15 most-cited of 400 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 Jon Fosheim on?: Jon Fosheim 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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8 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).