How do judges of the New Jersey Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New Jersey Supreme Court / Joined 1981 / Served to 2000

Daniel Joseph O'Hern

Justice, New Jersey Supreme Court

Daniel Joseph O'Hern was a Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1981. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1930–2009
Tenure: 1981–2000 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1981	New Jersey Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Fordham University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, O'Hern authored 220 published opinions for the court (1981–2000), plus 101 dissents and 63 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Roth (1,201 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. 384 of these were attributed to O'Hern 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
1984	State v. Roth†	471 A.2d 370	1,201
1997	State v. Marshall· Concurrence†	690 A.2d 1	771
1987	State v. Ramseur· Concurrence†	524 A.2d 188	731
1985	State v. Yarbough†	498 A.2d 1239	697
1999	In Re the Guardianship of K.H.O.· Concurrence†	736 A.2d 1246	518
1992	State v. Cofield†	605 A.2d 230	449
1991	State v. Marshall· Concurrence†	586 A.2d 85	445
1986	New Jersey Division of Youth & Family Services v. A.W.†	512 A.2d 438	445
1999	In Re the Guardianship of DMH· Concurrence†	736 A.2d 1261	410
1997	State v. Afanador†	697 A.2d 529	360
1982	Butler v. Acme Markets, Inc.†	445 A.2d 1141	306
1997	State v. Marrero· Concurrence†	691 A.2d 293	297
1982	Right to Choose v. Byrne· Dissent†	450 A.2d 925	257
1988	State v. Zola†	548 A.2d 1022	244
1984	Nappe v. Anschelewitz, Barr, Ansell & Bonello· Concurrence†	477 A.2d 1224	242

Showing the 15 most-cited of 384 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 Jersey Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Daniel Joseph O'Hern on?: Daniel Joseph O'Hern was a Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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