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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Minnesota Supreme Court / Joined 1963 / Served to 1981

Robert J. Sheran

Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court

Robert J. Sheran was a Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1963. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1916–2012
Tenure: 1963–1981 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1963	Minnesota Supreme Court	–	–
1973	Minnesota Supreme Court	–	–

Education

St Thomas University

Judicial Record

In our data, Sheran authored 272 published opinions for the court (1963–1981), plus 46 dissents and 12 concurrences. Most cited: Pacific Indemnity Co. v. Thompson-Yaeger, Inc. (184 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. 174 of these were attributed to Sheran 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
1977	Pacific Indemnity Co. v. Thompson-Yaeger, Inc.†	260 N.W.2d 548	184
1978	State v. Jones· Dissent†	271 N.W.2d 534	180
1967	Davis v. Re-Trac Manufacturing Corporation	149 N.W.2d 37	129
1965	State Ex Rel. Rasmussen v. Tahash	141 N.W.2d 3	119
1970	Bollenbach v. Bollenbach	175 N.W.2d 148	116
1965	Dahlberg Brothers, Inc. v. Ford Motor Company	137 N.W.2d 314	116
1977	Sherlock v. Stillwater Clinic· Dissent†	260 N.W.2d 169	110
1981	First National Bank of St. Paul v. Ramier· Dissent†	311 N.W.2d 502	106
1966	Balts v. Balts· Dissent†	142 N.W.2d 66	105
1980	Anderson Ex Rel. Anderson v. Stream· Dissent†	295 N.W.2d 595	100
1968	Silesky Ex Rel. Silesky v. Kelman· Dissent†	161 N.W.2d 631	95
1969	Beaudette v. Frana· Dissent†	173 N.W.2d 416	84
1968	Hopp v. Hopp	156 N.W.2d 212	83
1969	State v. Boyce	170 N.W.2d 104	81
1979	Lanoue v. Fireman's Fund American Insurance Co.· Dissent†	278 N.W.2d 49	77

Showing the 15 most-cited of 330 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 Robert J. Sheran on?: Robert J. Sheran 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

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

18 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).