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 1988 / Served to 1990

David Brock Hornby

Justice, Maine Supreme Judicial Court

David Brock Hornby was a Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1988. He earned a law degree from Harvard University in 1969. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1944 · age 82
Tenure: 1988–1990 · 1 yr
Education: Harvard

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1988	Maine Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Harvard University

J.D.

1969

Judicial Record

In our data, Hornby authored 63 published opinions for the court (1988–1990), plus 11 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Pinkham (104 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. 79 of these were attributed to Hornby 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
1989	State v. Pinkham†	565 A.2d 318	104
1990	Patrons Oxford Mutual Insurance v. Marois†	573 A.2d 16	77
1989	Thurston v. Continental Casualty Co.†	567 A.2d 922	63
1990	Department of Human Services v. Lowatchie· Dissent†	569 A.2d 197	61
1989	Pombriant v. Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Maine· Dissent†	562 A.2d 656	45
1989	State v. Harnish†	560 A.2d 5	34
1988	Forbes v. Osteopathic Hospital of Maine, Inc.· Dissent†	552 A.2d 16	25
1989	Stickles v. United Parcel Service†	554 A.2d 1176	24
1989	Gautschi v. Maisel†	565 A.2d 1009	23
1989	Libby v. Calais Regional Hospital· Dissent†	554 A.2d 1181	23
1989	Ashby v. Rust Engineering Co.†	559 A.2d 774	22
1989	State v. Woodburn· Dissent†	559 A.2d 343	22
1990	Levesque v. Chan· Concurrence†	569 A.2d 600	19
1989	North School Congregate Housing v. Merrithew†	558 A.2d 1189	15
1989	Burns v. Middlesex Insurance†	558 A.2d 701	14

Showing the 15 most-cited of 79 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 David Brock Hornby on?: David Brock Hornby was a Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

Sources

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

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1 year 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).