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 1969 / Served to 1981

Francis Quirico

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Francis Quirico was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1969. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1911–1999
Tenure: 1969–1981 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1969	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Quirico authored 353 published opinions for the court (1970–1981), plus 24 dissents and 24 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Latimore (1,893 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. 97 of these were attributed to Quirico 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
1979	Commonwealth v. Latimore	393 N.E.2d 370	1,893
1977	Nader v. Citron	360 N.E.2d 870	690
1976	Agis v. Howard Johnson Co.	355 N.E.2d 315	535
1979	Whitinsville Plaza, Inc. v. Kotseas	390 N.E.2d 243	371
1975	Slaney v. Westwood Auto, Inc.	322 N.E.2d 768	335
1973	Mounsey v. Ellard· Concurrence†	297 N.E.2d 43	335
1975	Stone v. Essex County Newspapers, Inc.· Concurrence†	330 N.E.2d 161	257
1980	Ferriter v. Daniel O'Connell's Sons, Inc.· Concurrence†	413 N.E.2d 690	249
1978	Poirier v. Town of Plymouth· Concurrence†	372 N.E.2d 212	237
1980	Commonwealth v. Casale	408 N.E.2d 841	224
1980	Purity Supreme, Inc. v. Attorney General	407 N.E.2d 297	207
1975	Rollins Environmental Services, Inc. v. Superior Court	330 N.E.2d 814	197
1973	Boston Housing Authority v. Hemingway· Concurrence†	293 N.E.2d 831	193
1975	Commonwealth v. Forde· Dissent†	329 N.E.2d 717	189
1980	Commonwealth v. Moon	405 N.E.2d 947	177

Showing the 15 most-cited of 401 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 Quirico on?: Francis Quirico 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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11 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).