How do judges of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Maine Supreme Judicial Court / Joined 1956 / Served to 1965

Francis W. Sullivan

Justice, Maine Supreme Judicial Court

Francis W. Sullivan was a Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1956. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1894–1967
Tenure: 1956–1965 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1956	Maine Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Georgetown University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Sullivan authored 79 published opinions for the court (1956–1965), plus 2 dissents. Most cited: Bedell v. Reagan (45 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. 78 of these were attributed to Sullivan 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
1963	Bedell v. Reagan†	192 A.2d 24	45
1957	First Nat. Bank of Boston v. Maine Turnpike Auth.†	136 A.2d 699	33
1956	Dunbar v. Greenlaw†	128 A.2d 218	26
1965	State v. Hathaway†	211 A.2d 558	24
1959	Squires v. Inhabitants of City of Augusta· Dissent†	153 A.2d 80	23
1960	Central Maine Power Co. v. Public Utilities Commission†	163 A.2d 762	22
1964	A. H. Benoit & Co. v. Johnson†	202 A.2d 1	21
1963	Duncan v. Robbins†	193 A.2d 362	19
1962	Tuttle v. State†	180 A.2d 608	18
1961	State v. Sanborn†	173 A.2d 854	18
1963	State v. Greenlaw	189 A.2d 370	17
1962	State v. Bennett†	179 A.2d 812	17
1958	McMann v. Reliable Furniture Co.†	140 A.2d 736	17
1963	Farm Bureau Mutual Ins. Co. v. Waugh	188 A.2d 889	14
1959	Hurley v. Towne†	156 A.2d 377	13

Showing the 15 most-cited of 81 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 Maine Supreme Judicial Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Francis W. Sullivan on?: Francis W. Sullivan was a Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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