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

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Vermont Supreme Court / Joined 1983 / Served to 1997

Ernest W. Gibson III

Justice, Vermont Supreme Court

Ernest W. Gibson III was a Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1983. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1928 · age 98
Tenure: 1983–1997 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	Vermont Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Yale University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Gibson authored 406 published opinions for the court (1983–1997), plus 21 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Isbrandtsen v. North Branch Corp. (160 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. 426 of these were attributed to Gibson 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
1988	Isbrandtsen v. North Branch Corp.†	556 A.2d 81	160
1986	Langle v. Kurkul· Dissent†	510 A.2d 1301	115
1989	Chioffi v. Winooski Zoning Board†	556 A.2d 103	113
1989	Poplaski v. Lamphere†	565 A.2d 1326	111
1994	Gallipo v. City of Rutland†	656 A.2d 635	107
1992	Hodgdon v. Mt. Mansfield Co., Inc.†	624 A.2d 1122	88
1996	State v. Austin†	685 A.2d 1076	85
1994	In re B.W.†	162 Vt. 287	79
1990	Fitzgerald v. Congleton†	583 A.2d 595	76
1997	Jordan v. State†	166 Vt. 509	75
1997	Amiot v. Ames†	693 A.2d 675	74
1996	Samplid Enterprises, Inc. v. First Vermont Bank†	676 A.2d 774	73
1997	Braun v. Board of Dental Examiners†	702 A.2d 124	71
1996	Rubin v. Sterling Enterprises, Inc.†	674 A.2d 782	69
1985	Paquette v. Paquette†	499 A.2d 23	67

Showing the 15 most-cited of 429 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 Ernest W. Gibson III on?: Ernest W. Gibson III 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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14 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).