Judge Edward J. Cleary was appointed Judge of the Court of Appeals in November 2011 by Governor Mark Dayton. Previously, he had been appointed by Governor Ventura to the Second Judicial District bench in 2002 and served as Assistant Chief Judge from 2008 until his Court of Appeals appointment. From 1997–2002, he served as the Director of the Minnesota Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility. For the two decades preceding his appointment to that position by the Supreme Court, he practiced law privately and, from 1980–1995, as a Ramsey County Public Defender. In that capacity, he successfully briefed and argued a First Amendment case in 1992 before the United States Supreme Court (RAV v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S.377 ) and authored an award-winning book on that case in 1994 (Beyond the Burning Cross, Random House – American Library Association Obeler Award 1996). He is a past President of the Ramsey County Bar Association and in 1998, the MSBA selected him as the recipient of the Graven Public Service Award. Since 2006, he has been the District Court representative on the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission, and in 2008, he served on the State Canvassing Board overseeing the Senate recount. He has been an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota Law School for the past 12 years, teaching professional responsibility and trial practice.

Associate Justice David R. Stras joined the Minnesota Supreme Court in July 2010. Prior to his appointment, Justice Stras was a member of the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School from 2004 through 2010. He taught and wrote in the areas of federal courts and jurisdiction, constitutional law, criminal law, and law and politics. In addition, Stras was co-director of the Institute for Law and Politics at the University of Minnesota. His law review articles have appeared in many academic journals, including the Cornell Law Review, Texas Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Northwestern Law Review, Constitutional Commentary, and the Minnesota Law Review. He has also served as of counsel to the law firm of Faegre Baker Daniels LLP in their appellate advocacy group. Justice Stras received his Bachelor of Arts degree, with highest distinction, in 1995 and his Master of Business Administration in 1999 from the University of Kansas. He also received his law degree from the University of Kansas School of Law in 1999, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Criminal Procedure Edition of the Kansas Law Review. While in law school, Stras achieved a number of academic honors, including election to the Order of the Coif. Following law school, Stras clerked for The Honorable Melvin Brunetti of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then for The Honorable J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. From 2001 to 2002, he practiced white-collar criminal and appellate litigation with the Washington, D.C., office of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood. Following his year in practice, he clerked for The Honorable Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States.

William J. Wernz is an Of Counsel member of the Trial Department at Dorsey & Whitney LLP. He was Ethics Partner and a member of the Trial Department at Dorsey & Whitney LLP in Minneapolis 1992–2009. He practices in the areas of attorney ethics, malpractice and fiduciary law. He is the author of Minnesota Legal Ethics (2011), an online treatise, hosted by the Minnesota State Bar Association. From 1985 to 1992 Mr. Wernz was the Director of the Minnesota Lawyers Board. In 1998–99 he was the president of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers, a nationwide group of over 200 lawyers. Mr. Wernz received the Minnesota Lawyer 2009 Outstanding Service to the Profession Award. In 1991 Mr. Wernz received the Minnesota State Bar Association Award of Excellence. In 2003 Mr. Wernz received the Minnesota State Bar Association President’s Award, for his work as chair of the Task Force that proposed changes in the Rules of Professional Conduct. In 2005 Mr. Wernz received the Hennepin County Bar Association Attorney Professionalism Award. Mr. Wernz has been an adjunct professor, teaching legal ethics, at the University of Minnesota and William Mitchell College of Law. Mr. Wernz is a summa cum laude graduate (1977) of the University of Notre Dame law school and has a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Iowa.