The Supreme Court may answer questions of law certified to it by the Supreme Court of the United States, a court of appeals of the United States, or a United States district court, if there are questions of law of this state involved in any proceeding before the certifying court which may be determinative of the cause pending in the certifying court and it appears to the certifying court and to the Supreme Court that there is no controlling precedent in the decisions of the Supreme Court of this state.
S.D. Codified Laws § 15-24A-1
Power to answer
Known as the Uniform Certification of Questions of Law
The act spans §§ 15-24A-1 to 15-24A-9 (11 sections).
Applied in 26 court decisions — leading case Champion v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co. (1987)
Most recently applied in Hermanek-Peck v. Spry (October 2022)
Source: SL 1984, ch 154, § 1; Supreme Court Rule 85-7, § 1.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: South Dakota Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain South Dakota statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.