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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Minnesota Supreme Court / Joined 1982 / Served to 1996

Mary Jeanne Coyne

Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court

Mary Jeanne Coyne was a Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1982. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1926–1998
Tenure: 1982–1996 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1982	Minnesota Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Coyne authored 383 published opinions for the court (1982–1996), plus 62 dissents and 33 concurrences. Most cited: Lewis v. Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States (289 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. 196 of these were attributed to Coyne 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
1986	Lewis v. Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States· Concurrence†	389 N.W.2d 876	289
1984	State v. Myers	359 N.W.2d 604	253
1985	Atwater Creamery Co. v. Western National Mutual Insurance Co.· Concurrence†	366 N.W.2d 271	194
1991	Friedman v. Commissioner of Public Safety· Dissent†	473 N.W.2d 828	177
1991	Rico v. State· Concurrence†	472 N.W.2d 100	168
1987	Marriage of Nardini v. Nardini	414 N.W.2d 184	148
1991	State v. Russell· Dissent†	477 N.W.2d 886	143
1990	Wirig v. Kinney Shoe Corp.· Concurrence†	461 N.W.2d 374	134
1994	State v. Post	512 N.W.2d 99	131
1995	In Re Hennepin County 1986 Recycling Bond Litigation· Dissent†	540 N.W.2d 494	127
1993	State v. Salitros	499 N.W.2d 815	119
1992	Dietz v. Dodge County	487 N.W.2d 237	114
1990	Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co. v. Travelers Indemnity Co.· Dissent†	457 N.W.2d 175	114
1992	State v. Dickerson· Concurrence†	481 N.W.2d 840	111
1994	State Ex Rel. Beaulieu v. City of Mounds View· Concurrence†	518 N.W.2d 567	110

Showing the 15 most-cited of 478 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 Mary Jeanne Coyne on?: Mary Jeanne Coyne 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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14 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).