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

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court / Joined 1949 / Served to 1960

Edward Augustine Counihan Jr.

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Edward Augustine Counihan Jr. was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1949. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1882–1961
Tenure: 1949–1960 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1949	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Harvard University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Counihan authored 311 published opinions for the court (1949–1960), plus 3 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Makarewicz (77 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. 85 of these were attributed to Counihan 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
1956	Commonwealth v. Makarewicz	132 N.E.2d 294	77
1950	Sheehan v. Tobin	93 N.E.2d 524	64
1950	Condon v. Haitsma	90 N.E.2d 549	52
1959	Hachadourian's Case	162 N.E.2d 663	51
1957	Commonwealth v. Banuchi	141 N.E.2d 835	51
1955	Gallagher v. STOP & STOP, INC.	126 N.E.2d 190	51
1953	Cowan v. EASTERN RACING ASSOCIATION, INC.	111 N.E.2d 752	51
1952	Commonwealth v. Smith	109 N.E.2d 120	50
1949	Commonwealth v. Shea†	324 Mass. 710	48
1959	Butler v. Cromartie	157 N.E.2d 649	46
1955	Mastercraft Wayside Furniture Co. v. Sightmaster Corp.	125 N.E.2d 233	46
1956	MacKeen v. Kasinskas	132 N.E.2d 732	45
1951	Donnelly v. Larkin	98 N.E.2d 280	44
1953	General Electric Co. v. Commonwealth	110 N.E.2d 101	43
1954	Jaquith v. Commonwealth	120 N.E.2d 189	41

Showing the 15 most-cited of 314 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 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Edward Augustine Counihan Jr. on?: Edward Augustine Counihan Jr. was a Justice of the Massachusetts 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 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).