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 1971 / Served to 1985

Roger Leland Wollman

Justice, South Dakota Supreme Court

Roger Leland Wollman was a Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1971. He earned a law degree from Harvard University in 1964. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1934 · age 92
Tenure: 1971–1985 · 14 yrs
Education: Tabor College 1957 · Harvard 1964

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1971	South Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Tabor College	B.A.	1957
Harvard University	LL.M.	1964

Judicial Record

In our data, Wollman authored 163 published opinions for the court (1971–1985), plus 106 dissents and 116 concurrences. Most cited: Malcolm v. Malcolm (197 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. 385 of these were attributed to Wollman 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
1985	Malcolm v. Malcolm†	365 N.W.2d 863	197
1976	State v. Opperman· Dissent†	247 N.W.2d 673	172
1983	Black Hills Jewelry Manufacturing Co. v. Felco Jewel Industries, Inc.· Concurrence†	336 N.W.2d 153	126
1984	Daugaard v. Baltic Cooperative Building Supply Ass'n· Dissent†	349 N.W.2d 419	116
1985	Simpson v. Tobin· Concurrence†	367 N.W.2d 757	102
1985	Gross v. Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Co.· Concurrence†	361 N.W.2d 259	96
1973	Engberg v. Ford Motor Company· Concurrence†	205 N.W.2d 104	95
1984	Saint-Pierre v. Saint-Pierre†	357 N.W.2d 250	94
1984	State v. McCafferty· Concurrence†	356 N.W.2d 159	88
1980	State v. McBride· Dissent†	296 N.W.2d 551	83
1981	Johnson v. John Deere Co.· Concurrence†	306 N.W.2d 231	81
1982	Walz v. City of Hudson· Concurrence†	327 N.W.2d 120	77
1985	State v. Reutter†	374 N.W.2d 617	71
1977	State v. Heisinger· Concurrence†	252 N.W.2d 899	66
1983	VerBouwens v. Hamm Wood Products· Concurrence†	334 N.W.2d 874	65

Showing the 15 most-cited of 385 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 Roger Leland Wollman on?: Roger Leland Wollman 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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14 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).