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 2001

Robert A. Miller

Justice, South Dakota Supreme Court

Robert A. Miller was a Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1986. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1939 · age 87
Tenure: 1986–2001 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

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

Education

University of South Dakota
University of South Dakota

Judicial Record

In our data, Miller authored 422 published opinions for the court (1973–2010), plus 52 dissents and 115 concurrences. Most cited: Martinmaas v. Engelmann (166 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. 201 of these were attributed to Miller 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
2000	Martinmaas v. Engelmann	2000 SD 85	166
1996	State v. Rhines	1996 SD 55	95
1993	Nelson v. WEB Water Development Ass'n, Inc.· Concurrence†	507 N.W.2d 691	95
1994	Poppen v. Walker· Concurrence†	520 N.W.2d 238	89
1993	Sander v. Geib, Elston, Frost Professional Ass'n	506 N.W.2d 107	86
1996	State v. Moeller	1996 SD 60	85
1991	Flockhart v. Wyant	467 N.W.2d 473	72
1989	Peterson v. Peterson· Concurrence†	434 N.W.2d 732	69
1993	State v. Oster· Concurrence†	495 N.W.2d 305	67
1988	Schoenrock v. Tappe	419 N.W.2d 197	67
1992	State v. Werner	482 N.W.2d 286	65
2000	Holzer v. Dakota Speedway, Inc.· Concurrence†	2000 SD 65	64
1994	Sommervold v. Grevlos· Dissent†	518 N.W.2d 733	62
1992	State v. Burtzlaff· Concurrence†	493 N.W.2d 1	62
1990	City of Fort Pierre v. United Fire & Casualty Co.	463 N.W.2d 845	61

Showing the 15 most-cited of 589 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 Robert A. Miller on?: Robert A. Miller 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

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

15 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).