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 2002 / Served to 2011

Judith K. Meierhenry

Justice, South Dakota Supreme Court

Judith K. Meierhenry was a Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2002. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1944 · age 82
Tenure: 2002–2011 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2002	South Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of South Dakota
University of South Dakota

Judicial Record

In our data, Meierhenry authored 184 published opinions for the court (1990–2011), plus 33 dissents and 38 concurrences. Most cited: Kirlin v. Halverson (62 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. 103 of these were attributed to Meierhenry 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
2008	Kirlin v. Halverson· Concurrence†	2008 SD 107	62
2007	Burley v. Kytec Innovative Sports Equipment, Inc.· Concurrence†	2007 SD 82	58
2009	State v. Deneui· Dissent†	2009 SD 99	50
2007	Hein v. Acuity· Concurrence†	2007 SD 40	47
2004	State v. Akuba· Dissent†	2004 SD 94	47
2006	Benson v. State· Dissent†	2006 SD 8	42
2008	State v. Bowker· Dissent†	2008 SD 61	41
2005	In Re South Dakota Microsoft Antitrust Litigation· Dissent†	2005 SD 113	39
2008	State v. Cottier	2008 SD 79	37
2005	Gloe v. Union Insurance Co.· Dissent†	2005 SD 30	36
2003	State v. Guthmiller	2003 SD 83	34
2010	State v. Beck	2010 SD 52	33
2010	American Family Insurance Group v. Robnik· Dissent†	2010 SD 69	30
2009	Hill v. Hill†	2009 SD 18	30
2007	State v. Johnson	2007 SD 86	29

Showing the 15 most-cited of 255 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 Judith K. Meierhenry on?: Judith K. Meierhenry was a Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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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).