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 1995 / Served to 1999

Charles Fried

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Charles Fried was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1995. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1935 · age 91
Tenure: 1995–1999 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1995	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Fried authored 115 published opinions for the court (1995–1999), plus 5 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Alphas (290 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. 127 of these were attributed to Fried 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
1999	Commonwealth v. Alphas· Concurrence†	430 Mass. 8	290
1996	McLaughlin v. Board of Selectmen†	422 Mass. 359	219
1997	Highlands Insurance v. Aerovox Inc.†	424 Mass. 226	189
1997	Commonwealth v. Amirault†	424 Mass. 618	178
1999	Brum v. Town of Dartmouth†	428 Mass. 684	171
1999	Commonwealth v. Gonsalves· Dissent†	429 Mass. 658	162
1997	Clegg v. Butler†	424 Mass. 413	146
1997	Commonwealth v. Raymond†	424 Mass. 382	144
1997	Commonwealth v. Santiago†	425 Mass. 491	142
1998	Commonwealth v. Pike†	428 Mass. 393	135
1996	MacCormack v. Boston Edison Co.†	423 Mass. 652	127
1998	Lafayette Place Associates v. Boston Redevelopment Authority†	427 Mass. 509	112
1997	Bain v. City of Springfield†	424 Mass. 758	112
1996	Custody of Vaughn†	422 Mass. 590	101
1999	E.N.O. v. L.M.M.· Dissent†	429 Mass. 824	91

Showing the 15 most-cited of 127 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 Charles Fried on?: Charles Fried 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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3 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).