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

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Vermont Supreme Court / Joined 1975 / Served to 1984

Franklin S. Billings Jr.

Justice, Vermont Supreme Court

Franklin S. Billings Jr. was a Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1975. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1922–2014
Tenure: 1975–1984 · 9 yrs
Education: Harvard 1943

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1975	Vermont Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Virginia-Main Campus
Harvard University	B.S.	1943

Judicial Record

In our data, Billings authored 273 published opinions for the court (1975–1984), plus 19 dissents and 12 concurrences. Most cited: In Re Poole (100 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. 304 of these were attributed to Billings 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
1978	In Re Poole†	388 A.2d 422	100
1981	State v. Derouchie· Concurrence†	440 A.2d 146	68
1979	Committee to Save the Bishop's House, Inc. v. Medical Center Hospital of Vermont, Inc.†	400 A.2d 1015	64
1984	Hilder v. St. Peter†	478 A.2d 202	60
1982	In re E. T. C.†	141 Vt. 375	60
1977	State v. Lapham†	377 A.2d 249	59
1981	State v. Gardner†	433 A.2d 249	52
1977	In Re Grievance of Brooks†	382 A.2d 204	50
1981	Vahlteich v. Knott†	433 A.2d 287	48
1978	State v. Howe· Concurrence†	386 A.2d 1125	48
1983	Cliche v. Cliche†	466 A.2d 314	46
1978	John v. Medical Center Hospital of Vermont, Inc.†	394 A.2d 1134	45
1983	Gramatan Home Investors Corp. v. Starling†	470 A.2d 1157	44
1979	State v. Warshow· Dissent†	410 A.2d 1000	42
1983	In Re Mecier†	460 A.2d 472	41

Showing the 15 most-cited of 304 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 Vermont Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Franklin S. Billings Jr. on?: Franklin S. Billings Jr. was a Justice of the Vermont 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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9 years on the Vermont Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).