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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Minnesota Supreme Court / Joined 1943 / Served to 1967

Thomas F. Gallagher

Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court

Thomas F. Gallagher was a Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1943. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1897–1985
Tenure: 1943–1967 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1943	Minnesota Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Gallagher authored 196 published opinions for the court (1945–1967), plus 19 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Mangold Midwest Co. v. Village of Richfield (69 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. 70 of these were attributed to Gallagher 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
1966	Mangold Midwest Co. v. Village of Richfield	143 N.W.2d 813	69
1945	Burnquist v. Cook	19 N.W.2d 394	53
1966	Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, Local 59 v. Obermeyer· Dissent†	147 N.W.2d 358	41
1966	State v. Perry	142 N.W.2d 573	39
1964	Lustik v. Rankila· Dissent†	131 N.W.2d 741	37
1964	Gabrelcik v. National Indemnity Co.· Dissent†	269 Minn. 445	36
1945	Fannon v. Federal Cartridge Corp.†	18 N.W.2d 249	36
1965	In Re Taxes for 1961 on Real Estate Owned by Cold Spring Granite Co.	136 N.W.2d 782	35
1964	Pluwak v. Lindberg· Dissent†	130 N.W.2d 134	32
1966	Ahlm v. Rooney	143 N.W.2d 65	30
1966	Validity of Claim of Assembly Homes, Inc. v. Yellow Medicine County	140 N.W.2d 336	30
1966	State Ex Rel. Fruhrman v. Tahash· Dissent†	146 N.W.2d 174	29
1965	Howe v. Nelson	135 N.W.2d 687	29
1966	Simons v. Schiek's, Inc.	145 N.W.2d 548	27
1946	State v. Lanesboro Produce & Hatchery Co.· Dissent†	21 N.W.2d 792	27

Showing the 15 most-cited of 216 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 Thomas F. Gallagher on?: Thomas F. Gallagher 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

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24 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).