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 2017 / Active

Steven R. Jensen

Chief Justice, South Dakota Supreme Court

Steven R. Jensen is a Chief Justice of the South Dakota Supreme Court, serving since 2017. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2017 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2017	South Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Jensen authored 17 published opinions for the court (2018–2019), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Harvieux v. Progressive N. Ins. Co. (37 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. 18 of these were attributed to Jensen 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
2018	Harvieux v. Progressive N. Ins. Co.†	2018 SD 52	37
2018	Stern Oil Co. v. Brown†	2018 SD 15	25
2019	State v. McMillen†	931 N.W.2d 725	24
2019	State v. Stone†	2019 SD 18	21
2019	Reck v. S.D. Bd. of Pardons & Paroles†	932 N.W.2d 135	18
2019	Taylor v. Taylor†	928 N.W.2d 458	14
2019	State v. Thomas†	2019 SD 1	9
2018	Garrido v. Team Auto Sales, Inc.†	2018 SD 41	9
2019	State v. Lewandowski†	2019 SD 2	7
2018	State v. Randle†	2018 SD 61	7
2019	Matter of Drainage Permit of McAreavey†	2019 SD 3	5
2018	In re Issuance of a Summons Compelling†	908 N.W.2d 160	5
2019	In re 2012 , 2013 and 2014 Tax Refund and Abatement Appeal of Hunt Companies, Inc.· Dissent†	927 N.W.2d 894	3
2018	State v. Ledbetter†	2018 SD 79	3
2018	Am. Legion Home Ass'n Post 22 v. Pennington Cnty.†	2018 SD 72	3

Showing the 15 most-cited of 18 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 is Steven R. Jensen on?: Steven R. Jensen is a Chief 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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9 years on the South Dakota Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-07-02. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).