How do judges of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court / Joined 1937 / Served to 1949

Arthur Dolan

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Arthur Dolan was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1937. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1876–1949
Tenure: 1937–1949 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1937	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Boston College
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Dolan authored 488 published opinions for the court (1937–1949). Most cited: Dodge v. Anna Jaques Hospital (98 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. 488 of these were attributed to Dolan 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
1938	Dodge v. Anna Jaques Hospital†	301 Mass. 431	98
1948	Commonwealth v. Farrell†	322 Mass. 606	89
1948	Durfee v. Durfee & Canning, Inc.†	323 Mass. 187	86
1943	Commonwealth v. Sheppard†	313 Mass. 590	69
1945	Ober v. National Casualty Co.†	318 Mass. 27	64
1946	Commonwealth v. Noxon†	319 Mass. 495	60
1938	Cameron v. Buckley†	299 Mass. 432	56
1941	Franz v. Franz†	308 Mass. 262	55
1942	Hurley v. Ornsteen†	311 Mass. 477	53
1940	Fitts v. Powell†	307 Mass. 449	53
1939	Kacavas v. Diamond†	303 Mass. 88	52
1943	City of Lowell v. Massachusetts Bonding & Insurance†	313 Mass. 257	51
1941	Atwood v. City of Boston†	310 Mass. 70	51
1938	Wine v. Commonwealth†	301 Mass. 451	51
1942	Tilton v. City of Haverhill†	311 Mass. 572	48

Showing the 15 most-cited of 488 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 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Arthur Dolan on?: Arthur Dolan was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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11 years on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).