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 1981 / Served to 1997

Francis Patrick O'Connor

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Francis Patrick O'Connor was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1981. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1927–2007
Tenure: 1981–1997 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1981	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Holy Cross College

Judicial Record

In our data, O'Connor authored 302 published opinions for the court (1982–1994), plus 71 dissents and 26 concurrences. Most cited: Kourouvacilis v. General Motors Corp. (2,301 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. 399 of these were attributed to O'Connor 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
1991	Kourouvacilis v. General Motors Corp.†	575 N.E.2d 734	2,301
1983	Mullins v. Pine Manor College· Dissent†	449 N.E.2d 331	371
1991	Riley v. Presnell· Dissent†	565 N.E.2d 780	293
1985	Madsen v. Erwin· Concurrence†	481 N.E.2d 1160	280
1986	Commonwealth v. Helfant· Dissent†	496 N.E.2d 433	274
1987	Foley v. Polaroid Corp.†	508 N.E.2d 72	265
1984	Commonwealth v. O'DELL†	466 N.E.2d 828	213
1992	Wright v. Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children†	589 N.E.2d 1241	189
1986	Wang Laboratories, Inc. v. Business Incentives, Inc.†	501 N.E.2d 1163	184
1983	DiMarzo v. American Mutual Insurance· Concurrence†	449 N.E.2d 1189	170
1982	Commonwealth v. King· Dissent†	441 N.E.2d 248	166
1990	Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, Inc. v. Operation Rescue· Dissent†	550 N.E.2d 1361	152
1987	King v. Globe Newspaper Co.†	512 N.E.2d 241	152
1982	Commonwealth v. Moran†	422 N.E.2d 399	149
1983	Commonwealth v. Bianco†	446 N.E.2d 1041	148

Showing the 15 most-cited of 399 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 Francis Patrick O'Connor on?: Francis Patrick O'Connor 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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15 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).