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 1972 / Served to 1981

Benjamin Kaplan

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Benjamin Kaplan was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1972. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1911–2010
Tenure: 1972–1981 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1972	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

CUNY City College
Columbia University in the City of New York

Judicial Record

In our data, Kaplan authored 246 published opinions for the court (1972–1981), plus 14 dissents and 15 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Saferian (1,208 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. 74 of these were attributed to Kaplan 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
1974	Commonwealth v. Saferian	315 N.E.2d 878	1,208
1973	Mounsey v. Ellard· Concurrence†	297 N.E.2d 43	335
1977	Commonwealth v. Satterfield	364 N.E.2d 1260	275
1975	Commonwealth v. Mahnke· Dissent†	335 N.E.2d 660	218
1973	Commonwealth v. Rodriquez	300 N.E.2d 192	183
1976	Commonwealth v. Botelho	343 N.E.2d 876	162
1981	Commonwealth v. Young	416 N.E.2d 944	152
1975	Petition of the New England Home for Little Wanderers	328 N.E.2d 854	150
1979	Commonwealth v. Meehan	387 N.E.2d 527	148
1979	Commonwealth v. St. Pierre	387 N.E.2d 1135	143
1975	Commonwealth v. Vitello· Dissent†	327 N.E.2d 819	142
1979	National Ass'n of Government Employees, Inc. v. Central Broadcasting Corp.	396 N.E.2d 996	140
1978	Commonwealth v. Ellison	379 N.E.2d 560	140
1975	Charbonnier v. Amico	324 N.E.2d 895	135
1973	Commonwealth v. Richards	293 N.E.2d 854	133

Showing the 15 most-cited of 275 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 Benjamin Kaplan on?: Benjamin Kaplan was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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9 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).