How do judges of the Connecticut Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Connecticut Supreme Court / Joined 1981 / Served to 1992

David M. Shea

Justice, Connecticut Supreme Court

David M. Shea was a Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1981. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1922–2003
Tenure: 1981–1992 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1981	Connecticut Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Brown University
Yale University
Yale University

Judicial Record

In our data, Shea authored 399 published opinions for the court (1975–1992), plus 64 dissents and 64 concurrences. Most cited: Connell v. Colwell (724 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. 390 of these were attributed to Shea 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
1990	Connell v. Colwell†	214 Conn. 242	724
1990	Liljedahl Bros. v. Grigsby· Dissent†	215 Conn. 345	572
1991	DeLaurentis v. City of New Haven†	220 Conn. 225	503
1987	Blancato v. Feldspar Corp.†	203 Conn. 34	493
1984	Magnan v. Anaconda Industries, Inc.†	193 Conn. 558	437
1986	Morris v. Hartford Courant Co.†	200 Conn. 676	432
1982	Batick v. Seymour	186 Conn. 632	418
1986	State v. Whelan†	200 Conn. 743	393
1985	Zizka v. Water Pollution Control Authority· Concurrence†	195 Conn. 682	388
1991	Sanzone v. Board of Police Commissioners†	219 Conn. 179	365
1987	American Universal Insurance v. DelGreco· Dissent†	205 Conn. 178	364
1983	Bartha v. Waterbury House Wrecking Co.	190 Conn. 8	350
1989	Primerica v. Planning & Zoning Commission†	211 Conn. 85	318
1983	In re Juvenile Appeal (83-CD)· Concurrence†	189 Conn. 276	307
1988	Maloney v. Conroy†	208 Conn. 392	266

Showing the 15 most-cited of 527 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 Connecticut Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was David M. Shea on?: David M. Shea was a Justice of the Connecticut 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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10 years on the Connecticut Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).