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

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Connecticut Supreme Court / Joined 1996 / Served to 2001

Francis M. McDonald Jr.

Justice, Connecticut Supreme Court

Francis M. McDonald Jr. was a Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1996. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1931 · age 95
Tenure: 1996–2001 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1996	Connecticut Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, McDonald authored 68 published opinions for the court (1996–2001), plus 63 dissents and 48 concurrences. Most cited: Pamela B. v. Ment (501 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. 179 of these were attributed to McDonald 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
1998	Pamela B. v. Ment· Dissent†	244 Conn. 296	501
1998	Maffucci v. Royal Park Ltd. Partnership· Concurrence†	243 Conn. 552	360
1997	Connecticut v. Porter· Dissent†	241 Conn. 57	268
2000	Tallmadge Bros. v. Iroquois Gas Transmission System, L.P.· Dissent†	252 Conn. 479	222
1998	Dowling v. Slotnik· Dissent†	244 Conn. 781	170
2001	State v. Kelly· Concurrence†	256 Conn. 23	162
1998	Binette v. Sabo· Concurrence†	244 Conn. 23	161
1997	Skuzinski v. Bouchard Fuels, Inc.· Concurrence†	240 Conn. 694	152
1998	Irwin v. Planning & Zoning Commission· Dissent†	244 Conn. 619	135
2000	Burnham v. Karl & Gelb, P.C.· Dissent†	252 Conn. 153	129
1997	Miller v. Commissioner of Correction· Dissent†	242 Conn. 745	128
1997	State v. Garvin· Concurrence†	242 Conn. 296	126
1998	Ireland v. Ireland· Dissent†	246 Conn. 413	120
1998	Bornemann v. Bornemann· Dissent†	245 Conn. 508	111
1999	State v. Pinder· Concurrence†	250 Conn. 385	103

Showing the 15 most-cited of 179 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 Francis M. McDonald Jr. on?: Francis M. McDonald Jr. 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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5 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).