How do judges of the New Hampshire Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New Hampshire Supreme Court / Joined 1943 / Served to 1952

Francis Wayland Johnston

Justice, New Hampshire Supreme Court

Francis Wayland Johnston was a Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1943. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1882–1960
Tenure: 1943–1952 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1943	New Hampshire Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Harvard University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Johnston authored 122 published opinions for the court (1943–1952), plus 8 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Dumas v. Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co. (48 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. 11 of these were attributed to Johnston 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
1947	Dumas v. Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co.	56 A.2d 57	48
1948	Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co. v. Wolbarst	57 A.2d 151	44
1951	Farm Bureau Automobile Insurance v. Martin†	97 N.H. 196	32
1945	Ibey v. Ibey	43 A.2d 157	25
1951	Burke v. Burnham· Dissent†	97 N.H. 203	22
1948	Williams v. Walker	61 A.2d 522	18
1952	State v. Poulos	97 N.H. 352	17
1947	Mehigan v. Sheehan	51 A.2d 632	16
1948	Philbrick v. Chase	58 A.2d 317	15
1950	State v. Kimball· Dissent†	96 N.H. 377	14
1945	Lefebvre v. Somersworth Shoe Co.	41 A.2d 924	14
1946	Lovejoy v. Ashworth	45 A.2d 218	12
1951	A. W. Therrien Co. v. Maryland Casualty Co.	97 N.H. 180	11
1951	Gagnon v. Pronovost· Dissent†	97 N.H. 58	11
1951	Cushman v. County of Grafton	97 N.H. 32	11

Showing the 15 most-cited of 131 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 New Hampshire Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Francis Wayland Johnston on?: Francis Wayland Johnston was a Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court.

Sources

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9 years on the New Hampshire Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).