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 1986 / Served to 2008

Richard W. Sabers

Justice, South Dakota Supreme Court

Richard W. Sabers was a Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1986. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1938 · age 88
Tenure: 1986–2008 · 22 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1986	South Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Education

College of Saint Benedict
University of South Dakota

Judicial Record

In our data, Sabers authored 536 published opinions for the court (1986–2009), plus 377 dissents and 400 concurrences. Most cited: Bego v. Gordon (162 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. 819 of these were attributed to Sabers 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
1987	Bego v. Gordon	407 N.W.2d 801	162
1987	Groseth International, Inc. v. Tenneco, Inc.	410 N.W.2d 159	156
2001	State v. Guthrie· Concurrence†	627 N.W.2d 401	123
1989	Pickering v. Pickering· Concurrence†	434 N.W.2d 758	119
2002	Chem-Age Industries, Inc. v. Glover· Concurrence†	2002 SD 122	113
1992	Tibke v. McDougall· Dissent†	479 N.W.2d 898	108
1996	State v. Rhines· Dissent†	1996 SD 55	95
1993	Nelson v. WEB Water Development Ass'n, Inc.· Concurrence†	507 N.W.2d 691	95
1986	State v. Rufener· Dissent†	392 N.W.2d 424	93
1999	State v. Wright· Dissent†	1999 SD 50	92
1993	US West Communications, Inc. v. Public Utilities Commission· Concurrence†	505 N.W.2d 115	92
1991	Dahl v. Sittner· Concurrence†	474 N.W.2d 897	90
1994	Isaac v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co.	522 N.W.2d 752	89
1987	State v. Michalek	407 N.W.2d 815	89
1999	Fuerstenberg v. Fuerstenberg· Concurrence†	1999 SD 35	87

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,313 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 Richard W. Sabers on?: Richard W. Sabers 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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22 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).