How do judges of the New York Appellate Division reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New York Appellate Division / Joined 2000 / Served to 2003

Christopher J. Burns

Justice, New York Appellate Division

Christopher J. Burns was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division (18 judges, selected by gubernatorial appointment), who joined the court in 2000. They previously served on the New York Justice Court and New York Supreme Court. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2000–2003 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2000	New York Appellate Division	–	–
1984	New York Justice Court	–	–
1996	New York Supreme Court	–	–
2000	New York Appellate Division	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Burns authored 4 published opinions for the court (2002–2003), plus 1 dissent and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Onondaga County Department of Social Services v. Timothy S. (11 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. 6 of these were attributed to Burns 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
2002	Onondaga County Department of Social Services v. Timothy S.†	294 A.D.2d 27	11
2003	In re the Arbitration between Liberty Mutual Insurance & Hanover Insurance†	307 A.D.2d 40	5
2002	People v. Hall†	291 A.D.2d 143	5
2002	Allstate Insurance v. Roberts· Concurrence†	299 A.D.2d 820	2
2002	McDaniel v. Fischione Construction Co.· Dissent†	292 A.D.2d 759	1
2002	Armata v. Abbott Laboratories†	298 A.D.2d 90	0

Showing the 6 most-cited of 6 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 New York Appellate Division reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Christopher J. Burns on?: Christopher J. Burns was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division.

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 New York Appellate Division. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).