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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Minnesota Supreme Court / Joined 1953 / Served to 1972

Martin A. Nelson

Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court

Martin A. Nelson was a Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1953. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1889–1979
Tenure: 1953–1972 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1953	Minnesota Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Nelson authored 488 published opinions for the court (1953–1972), plus 17 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: Beck v. Groe (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. 92 of these were attributed to Nelson 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
1955	Beck v. Groe	245 Minn. 28	122
1968	Silesky Ex Rel. Silesky v. Kelman	161 N.W.2d 631	95
1959	Marshall Produce Co. v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Insurance	256 Minn. 404	94
1963	State v. Harris	265 Minn. 260	93
1968	Dalton v. Dow Chemical Co.	158 N.W.2d 580	92
1957	Anderson v. Twin City Rapid Transit Co.	250 Minn. 167	91
1954	Matthis v. Kennedy	243 Minn. 219	72
1959	State v. Moseng	254 Minn. 263	71
1954	Gronquist v. Olson	242 Minn. 119	70
1958	Van Asperen v. Darling Olds, Inc.	254 Minn. 62	66
1963	Youngstown Mines Corp. v. Prout	266 Minn. 450	64
1958	Meagher v. Kavli	251 Minn. 477	64
1963	Martinco v. Hastings	265 Minn. 490	63
1972	State v. Hoskins	193 N.W.2d 802	62
1965	Telex Corporation v. Data Products Corporation	135 N.W.2d 681	61

Showing the 15 most-cited of 510 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 Martin A. Nelson on?: Martin A. Nelson 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

19 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).