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

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Vermont Supreme Court / Joined 1990 / Served to 2011

Denise Johnson

Justice, Vermont Supreme Court

Denise Johnson was a Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1990. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1948 · age 78
Tenure: 1990–2011 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1990	Vermont Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Wayne State University
University of Connecticut

Judicial Record

In our data, Johnson authored 309 published opinions for the court (1991–2012), plus 75 dissents and 28 concurrences. Most cited: Colby v. Umbrella, Inc. (247 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. 312 of these were attributed to Johnson 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
2008	Colby v. Umbrella, Inc.	2008 VT 20	247
1999	Baker v. State· Concurrence†	744 A.2d 864	168
1993	In re A.F.†	160 Vt. 175	150
1998	Parker v. Town of Milton	726 A.2d 477	130
1999	Brueckner v. Norwich University· Dissent†	730 A.2d 1086	128
2003	Boulton v. CLD Consulting Engineers, Inc.	2003 VT 72	127
1997	Cabot v. Cabot†	697 A.2d 644	125
1994	Mullin v. Phelps†	647 A.2d 714	118
1994	State v. Delisle· Concurrence†	648 A.2d 632	102
1996	In re B.M.†	165 Vt. 331	101
2005	Monahan v. GMAC Mortgage Corp.	2005 VT 110	94
2000	Hoover (Letourneau) v. Hoover· Dissent†	764 A.2d 1192	94
2000	In Re Handy· Dissent†	764 A.2d 1226	88
2008	Bischoff v. Bletz	2008 VT 16	86
1995	Sabia v. State†	669 A.2d 1187	85

Showing the 15 most-cited of 412 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 Vermont Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Denise Johnson on?: Denise Johnson was a Justice of the Vermont 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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21 years on the Vermont Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).