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 1937 / Served to 1962

St. Clair Smith

Justice, South Dakota Supreme Court

St. Clair Smith was a Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1937. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1889 · age 137
Tenure: 1937–1962 · 25 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1937	South Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Education

George Washington University

Judicial Record

In our data, Smith authored 272 published opinions for the court (1937–2007), plus 13 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Scotvold v. Scotvold (78 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. 28 of these were attributed to Smith 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
1941	Scotvold v. Scotvold	298 N.W. 266	78
1956	Boe v. Foss	77 N.W.2d 1	65
1942	Bartron v. Codington County	2 N.W.2d 337	55
1944	F. M. Slagle & Co. v. Bushnell	16 N.W.2d 914	54
1961	Davis v. Kressly	107 N.W.2d 5	48
1957	Schmeling v. Jorgensen	84 N.W.2d 558	45
1942	Federal Land Bank of Omaha v. Houck	4 N.W.2d 213	45
1943	Friese v. Gulbrandson	8 N.W.2d 438	41
1939	Rosebud Lumber & Coal Co. v. Ryan	289 N.W. 81	40
1951	Carr v. Preslar	47 N.W.2d 497	38
1937	Schomer v. Scott	274 N.W. 556	35
1953	Kunz v. Johnson	57 N.W.2d 116	29
1945	Crilly v. Morris	19 N.W.2d 836	29
1945	Tufty v. Sioux Transit Co.	17 N.W.2d 700	29
1943	Reaney v. Union County	10 N.W.2d 762	29

Showing the 15 most-cited of 288 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 St. Clair Smith on?: St. Clair Smith 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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25 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).