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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Minnesota Supreme Court / Joined 1996 / Served to 2006

Kathleen A. Blatz

Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court

Kathleen A. Blatz was a Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1996. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1954 · age 72
Tenure: 1996–2006 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1996	Minnesota Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Notre Dame

Judicial Record

In our data, Blatz authored 177 published opinions for the court (1997–2006), plus 25 dissents and 13 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Griller (451 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. 78 of these were attributed to Blatz 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
1998	State v. Griller	583 N.W.2d 736	451
2004	Bernhardt v. State	684 N.W.2d 465	280
2002	State v. Misquadace	644 N.W.2d 65	115
1998	Lake v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.	582 N.W.2d 231	108
2002	State v. Wiegand· Concurrence†	645 N.W.2d 125	104
2005	State v. Leake	699 N.W.2d 312	100
2005	State v. Modtland	695 N.W.2d 602	93
2000	Interstate Power Co. v. Nobles County Board of Commissioners	617 N.W.2d 566	91
1999	In Re Linehan	594 N.W.2d 867	90
1997	Kroning v. State Farm Automobile Insurance Co.	567 N.W.2d 42	84
2001	Burkstrand v. Burkstrand	632 N.W.2d 206	81
2002	Thommes v. Milwaukee Insurance Co.· Dissent†	641 N.W.2d 877	78
2000	Goeb v. Tharaldson	615 N.W.2d 800	77
2003	Taylor v. State· Dissent†	670 N.W.2d 584	75
2005	State v. Dorsey· Dissent†	701 N.W.2d 238	72

Showing the 15 most-cited of 215 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 Kathleen A. Blatz on?: Kathleen A. Blatz 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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9 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).