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 1991 / Served to 2002

Robert A. Amundson

Justice, South Dakota Supreme Court

Robert A. Amundson was a Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1991. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1940 · age 86
Tenure: 1991–2002 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1991	South Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Augustana College

Judicial Record

In our data, Amundson authored 243 published opinions for the court (1987–2003), plus 86 dissents and 89 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. 187 of these were attributed to Amundson 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· Dissent†	2000 SD 85	166
1996	State v. Rhines· Dissent†	1996 SD 55	95
1993	US West Communications, Inc. v. Public Utilities Commission· Concurrence†	505 N.W.2d 115	92
1994	Isaac v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co.· Concurrence†	522 N.W.2d 752	89
1994	Poppen v. Walker· Dissent†	520 N.W.2d 238	89
1997	City of Colton v. Schwebach	1997 SD 4	85
1991	Waddell v. Dewey County Bank	471 N.W.2d 591	80
1996	Kuper v. Lincoln-Union Electric Co.	557 N.W.2d 748	77
1999	South Dakota Subsequent Injury Fund v. Casualty Reciprocal Exchange	1999 SD 2	76
1999	State v. Smith· Concurrence†	1999 SD 83	74
1997	Alverson v. Northwestern National Casualty Co.· Dissent†	1997 SD 9	73
1995	Kyllo v. Panzer	535 N.W.2d 896	73
1993	Lamp v. First National Bank of Garretson· Dissent†	496 N.W.2d 581	72
1997	Grynberg v. Citation Oil & Gas Corp.· Concurrence†	1997 SD 121	71
1999	Veeder v. Kennedy· Dissent†	1999 SD 23	69

Showing the 15 most-cited of 418 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. Amundson on?: Robert A. Amundson 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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11 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).