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 1974 / Served to 1977

Oren P. Coler

Justice, South Dakota Supreme Court

Oren P. Coler was a Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1974. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1925 · age 101
Tenure: 1974–1977 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1974	South Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Coler authored 34 published opinions for the court (1975–1976), plus 21 dissents and 15 concurrences. Most cited: Behrns v. Burke (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. 46 of these were attributed to Coler 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
1975	Behrns v. Burke· Concurrence†	229 N.W.2d 86	62
1976	State v. Stumes	241 N.W.2d 587	52
1975	Moore v. Kluthe & Lane Ins. Agency, Inc.	234 N.W.2d 260	50
1975	Swenson v. Chevron Chemical Company· Concurrence†	234 N.W.2d 38	42
1976	State v. Marshall· Dissent†	247 N.W.2d 484	37
1975	Christofferson v. McCann· Dissent†	89 S.D. 287	35
1976	McDonald v. Sch. Bd. of Yankton Ind. Sch. Dist. No. 1	246 N.W.2d 93	33
1976	Griffin v. Sebek	245 N.W.2d 481	32
1975	Arbach v. Gruba· Concurrence†	232 N.W.2d 842	31
1975	City of Sioux Falls v. Sioux Falls Firefighters, Local 814	234 N.W.2d 35	28
1975	Novak v. CJ Grossenburg and Son· Dissent†	232 N.W.2d 463	27
1976	Heiser v. Rodway· Concurrence†	247 N.W.2d 65	26
1976	State v. Lewis	244 N.W.2d 307	23
1976	State v. ONE 1972 PONTIAC GRAND PRIX, ETC.· Concurrence†	242 N.W.2d 660	23
1975	State v. Hoover· Concurrence†	236 N.W.2d 635	23

Showing the 15 most-cited of 70 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 Oren P. Coler on?: Oren P. Coler 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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3 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).