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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Minnesota Supreme Court / Joined 1955 / Served to 1972

William P. Murphy

Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court

William P. Murphy was a Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1955. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1898–1986
Tenure: 1955–1972 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1955	Minnesota Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Murphy authored 369 published opinions for the court (1955–2008), plus 33 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Billstrom (160 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. 80 of these were attributed to Murphy 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
1967	State v. Billstrom· Concurrence†	149 N.W.2d 281	160
1965	Bennett v. Storz Broadcasting Co.	134 N.W.2d 892	120
1970	Christy v. Saliterman	179 N.W.2d 288	110
1966	Donnay v. Boulware	144 N.W.2d 711	102
1957	Wichelman v. Messner	250 Minn. 88	100
1961	Fussner v. Andert	261 Minn. 347	95
1965	State v. Norgaard	136 N.W.2d 628	86
1958	Couillard v. Charles T. Miller Hospital, Inc.	253 Minn. 418	86
1956	State Ex Rel. Foster v. Naftalin· Dissent†	246 Minn. 181	69
1959	Connolly v. Nicollet Hotel	254 Minn. 373	67
1958	McCourtie v. United States Steel Corp.	253 Minn. 501	65
1964	Anderson v. Commissioner of Highways	267 Minn. 308	61
1960	Bosch v. Meeker Cooperative Light & Power Assn.	257 Minn. 362	58
1967	Federal Insurance Company v. Prestemon	153 N.W.2d 429	56
1963	State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance v. Village of Isle· Dissent†	265 Minn. 360	56

Showing the 15 most-cited of 409 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 William P. Murphy on?: William P. Murphy 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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17 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).