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 2011 / Former Justice

Lori S. Wilbur

Justice, South Dakota Supreme Court

Lori S. Wilbur was a Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2011. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2011 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2011	South Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of South Dakota
University of South Dakota

Judicial Record

In our data, Wilbur authored 122 published opinions for the court (2000–2017), plus 3 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Fierro (63 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. 122 of these were attributed to Wilbur 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
2014	State v. Fierro†	2014 SD 62	63
2014	Hamilton v. Sommers†	2014 SD 76	54
2015	Andrews v. Ridco & Twin City Fire Ins. Co.†	2015 SD 24	36
2017	State v. Bausch†	2017 SD 1	30
2015	State v. Birdshead†	2015 SD 77	30
2012	State v. Roach†	2012 S.D. 91	30
2016	Ageton v. Jackley†	2016 SD 29	29
2013	Eagle Ridge Estates Homeowners Ass'n v. Anderson†	2013 S.D. 21	28
2012	In Re the Expungement of Records Related to Oliver†	2012 S.D. 9	28
2001	Baker v. Atkinson	2001 SD 49	28
2013	State v. Hauge†	2013 S.D. 26	26
2013	Poeppel v. Lester†	2013 S.D. 17	26
2014	State v. Hayes†	2014 SD 72	25
2013	State v. Kvasnicka†	2013 SD 25	23
2012	Hass v. Wentzlaff†	2012 S.D. 50	23

Showing the 15 most-cited of 130 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 Lori S. Wilbur on?: Lori S. Wilbur 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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14 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).