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 1971 / Served to 1989

Edward F. Hennessey

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Edward F. Hennessey was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1971. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1919–2007
Tenure: 1971–1989 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1971	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Northeastern University

Judicial Record

In our data, Hennessey authored 720 published opinions for the court (1971–1989), plus 28 dissents and 34 concurrences. Most cited: Community National Bank v. Dawes (1,734 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. 170 of these were attributed to Hennessey 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
1976	Community National Bank v. Dawes	340 N.E.2d 877	1,734
1982	Payton v. Abbott Labs· Dissent†	437 N.E.2d 171	399
1974	Commonwealth v. Silva	318 N.E.2d 895	300
1982	Simon v. Solomon	431 N.E.2d 556	264
1975	Stone v. Essex County Newspapers, Inc.	330 N.E.2d 161	257
1978	Heller v. Silverbranch Construction Corp.	382 N.E.2d 1065	250
1980	Ferriter v. Daniel O'Connell's Sons, Inc.· Dissent†	413 N.E.2d 690	249
1987	College-Town, Division of Interco, Inc. v. Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination	508 N.E.2d 587	228
1984	Irwin v. Town of Ware	467 N.E.2d 1292	228
1988	Heacock v. Heacock	520 N.E.2d 151	219
1975	Commonwealth v. Mahnke· Dissent†	335 N.E.2d 660	218
1978	Back v. Wickes Corp.	378 N.E.2d 964	215
1977	Commonwealth v. Haas· Dissent†	369 N.E.2d 692	209
1977	Whitney v. City of Worcester	366 N.E.2d 1210	205
1989	Bally v. Northeastern University	532 N.E.2d 49	204

Showing the 15 most-cited of 782 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 F. Hennessey on?: Edward F. Hennessey 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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17 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).