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

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Maine Supreme Judicial Court / Joined 1981 / Served to 2001

Daniel E. Wathen

Justice, Maine Supreme Judicial Court

Daniel E. Wathen was a Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1981. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1939 · age 87
Tenure: 1981–2001 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1981	Maine Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

University of Maine

Judicial Record

In our data, Wathen authored 943 published opinions for the court (1981–2001), plus 50 dissents and 13 concurrences. Most cited: Levine v. R.B.K. Caly Corp. (318 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. 786 of these were attributed to Wathen 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
2001	Levine v. R.B.K. Caly Corp.	2001 ME 77	318
1997	Rodrigue v. Rodrigue†	1997 ME 99	206
2000	Seider v. Board of Examiners of Psychologists	2000 ME 206	184
2000	Rideout v. Riendeau	2000 ME 198	170
1982	Seven Islands Land Co. v. Maine Land Use Regulation Commission· Concurrence†	450 A.2d 475	141
1983	Baybutt Construction Corp. v. Commercial Union Insurance· Dissent†	455 A.2d 914	118
2001	In Re Scott S.	2001 ME 114	106
1999	Kenny v. Department of Human Services†	740 A.2d 560	102
2000	Stewart v. Town of Sedgwick	2000 ME 157	91
1989	Peerless Insurance Co. v. Brennon†	564 A.2d 383	90
2001	Stanton v. University of Maine System	2001 ME 96	89
1990	Chapman v. Rideout†	568 A.2d 829	88
2000	Forrest Associates v. Passamaquoddy Tribe	2000 ME 195	87
2000	Merriam v. Wanger	2000 ME 159	83
2001	Stickney v. City of Saco	2001 ME 69	81

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,006 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 Maine Supreme Judicial Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Daniel E. Wathen on?: Daniel E. Wathen was a Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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