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

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Connecticut Supreme Court / Joined 1966 / Served to 1972

Elmer W. Ryan

Justice, Connecticut Supreme Court

Elmer W. Ryan was a Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court (7 judges, selected by gubernatorial appointment), who joined the court in 1966. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1902–1979
Tenure: 1966–1972 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1966	Connecticut Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Yale University

Judicial Record

In our data, Ryan authored 37 published opinions for the court (1967–1972), plus 9 dissents. Most cited: Corey v. Avco-Lycoming Division (186 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. 26 of these were attributed to Ryan 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
1972	Corey v. Avco-Lycoming Division†	163 Conn. 309	186
1972	Birgel v. Heintz· Dissent†	163 Conn. 23	129
1968	Schurgast v. Schumann	156 Conn. 471	118
1968	RK Development Corp. v. City of Norwalk†	156 Conn. 369	118
1972	Ross Realty Corp. v. Surkis†	163 Conn. 388	83
1971	DuBose v. Carabetta	161 Conn. 254	83
1971	McCrann v. Town Plan & Zoning Commission	161 Conn. 65	82
1968	Johnston Jewels, Ltd. v. Leonard	156 Conn. 75	72
1971	Lurie v. Planning & Zoning Commission· Dissent†	160 Conn. 295	69
1967	Donohue v. Zoning Board of Appeals†	155 Conn. 550	68
1968	Console v. Nickou	156 Conn. 268	61
1967	I. R. Stich Associates, Inc. v. Town Council†	155 Conn. 1	57
1968	Katz v. Brandon†	156 Conn. 521	54
1972	Busko v. DeFilippo· Dissent†	162 Conn. 462	46
1970	Mei v. Alterman Transport Lines, Inc.	159 Conn. 307	45

Showing the 15 most-cited of 46 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 Elmer W. Ryan on?: Elmer W. Ryan 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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6 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).