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 1977 / Served to 1988

David A. Nichols

Justice, Maine Supreme Judicial Court

David A. Nichols was a Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1917–1997
Tenure: 1977–1988 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	Maine Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Bates College

Judicial Record

In our data, Nichols authored 303 published opinions for the court (1977–1988), plus 17 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Williams (103 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. 322 of these were attributed to Nichols 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
1978	State v. Williams· Concurrence†	388 A.2d 500	103
1984	Larrabee v. Penobscot Frozen Foods, Inc.†	486 A.2d 97	96
1985	Hall v. Board of Environmental Protection†	498 A.2d 260	90
1979	State v. Gleason†	404 A.2d 573	74
1983	State v. Mikulewicz†	462 A.2d 497	73
1979	Tibbetts v. Tibbetts†	406 A.2d 70	65
1988	Trusiani v. Cumberland & York Distributors, Inc.†	538 A.2d 258	64
1979	Labbe v. Nissen Corp.†	404 A.2d 564	61
1981	Shawmut Inn v. Inhabitants of Kennebunkport†	428 A.2d 384	51
1979	Harmon v. Harmon†	404 A.2d 1020	49
1985	City of Portland v. Jacobsky†	496 A.2d 646	48
1983	Hanover Insurance Co v. Hayward†	464 A.2d 156	48
1981	Penobscot Area Housing Development Corp. v. City of Brewer†	434 A.2d 14	48
1978	Gashgai v. Board of Registration in Medicine†	390 A.2d 1080	47
1984	State v. Maine State Employees Ass'n†	482 A.2d 461	46

Showing the 15 most-cited of 326 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 A. Nichols on?: David A. Nichols 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

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11 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).