Minnesota Supreme Court
the highest court in the U.S. state of Minnesota
The Minnesota Supreme Court is the highest court in the U.S. state of Minnesota. The court hears cases in the Supreme Court chamber of the Minnesota State Capitol and in the nearby Minnesota Judicial Center.
History
The court was first assembled as a three-judge panel in 1849 when Minnesota was still a territory. The first members were lawyers from outside the region, appointed by President Zachary Taylor. The court system was rearranged when Minnesota became a state in 1858.
Appeals from Minnesota District Courts went directly to the Minnesota Supreme Court until the Minnesota Court of Appeals, an intermediate appellate court, was created in 1983 to handle most of those cases. The court now considers about 900 appeals per year and accepts review in about one in eight cases. Before the Court of Appeals was created, the Minnesota Supreme Court handled about 1,800 cases a year. Certain appeals can go directly to the Supreme Court, such as those involving taxes, first degree murder, and workers' compensation.
Composition
The seven justices of the Minnesota Supreme Court are elected to renewable six-year terms.
“Minnesota Supreme Court” enters the record as the highest court in the U.S. state of Minnesota. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Minnesota, Supreme and Court can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Minnesota Supreme Court” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Minnesota, Supreme and Court provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2113741. The Library of Congress control number is n80001269. Authority coordinates are 44.954, -93.100. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1849, 1858 and 1983.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Minnesota Supreme Court”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Minnesota Supreme Court primary sources, Minnesota Supreme Court archive and Minnesota research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Minnesota Supreme Court”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Minnesota Supreme Court” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.