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 1976 / Served to 1983

Edward S. Godfrey

Justice, Maine Supreme Judicial Court

Edward S. Godfrey was a Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1976. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1913–2005
Tenure: 1976–1983 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1976	Maine Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Harvard University
Columbia University in the City of New York

Judicial Record

In our data, Godfrey authored 203 published opinions for the court (1976–1984), plus 6 dissents and 9 concurrences. Most cited: Adams v. Buffalo Forge Co. (109 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. 214 of these were attributed to Godfrey 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
1982	Adams v. Buffalo Forge Co.· Concurrence†	443 A.2d 932	109
1979	Black v. Solmitz†	409 A.2d 634	96
1981	State v. Bleyl†	435 A.2d 1349	73
1978	Maine Human Rights Commission v. Local 1361, United Paperworkers International Union AFL-CIO· Dissent†	383 A.2d 369	69
1982	Union Mutual Fire Insurance v. Inhabitants of Topsham†	441 A.2d 1012	68
1982	New England Telephone & Telegraph Co. v. Public Utilities Commission†	448 A.2d 272	63
1979	Thiboutot v. State†	405 A.2d 230	60
1980	Smith v. Smith†	419 A.2d 1035	57
1979	Bartner v. Carter†	405 A.2d 194	57
1978	Gibson v. National Ben Franklin Insurance†	387 A.2d 220	57
1980	Dobson v. Quinn Freight Lines, Inc.†	415 A.2d 814	49
1981	Cyr v. Cyr†	432 A.2d 793	45
1981	State v. Theriault†	425 A.2d 986	45
1981	State v. Hilton†	431 A.2d 1296	42
1981	Bowman v. Dussault†	425 A.2d 1325	42

Showing the 15 most-cited of 218 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 Edward S. Godfrey on?: Edward S. Godfrey 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

6 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).