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 1929 / Served to 1947

Fred Tarbell Field

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Fred Tarbell Field was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (8 judges, selected by gubernatorial appointment), who joined the court in 1929. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1876–1950
Tenure: 1929–1947 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1929	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Brown University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Field authored 513 published opinions for the court (1929–1947). Most cited: Perry v. Hanover (233 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. 513 of these were attributed to Field 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
1943	Perry v. Hanover†	314 Mass. 167	233
1943	Hoffman v. City of Chelsea†	315 Mass. 54	132
1942	Memishian v. Phipps†	311 Mass. 521	107
1936	Adamaitis v. Metropolitan Life Insurance†	295 Mass. 215	102
1940	City of Boston v. Santosuosso†	307 Mass. 302	90
1931	Weiner v. D. A. Schulte, Inc.†	275 Mass. 379	88
1936	Leshefsky v. American EmPloyers' Insurance†	293 Mass. 164	81
1938	DesLauries v. Shea†	300 Mass. 30	76
1943	Coe v. Coe†	313 Mass. 232	75
1937	Assessors of Boston v. Garland School of Home Making†	296 Mass. 378	74
1934	Kelley v. Goldberg†	288 Mass. 79	73
1938	Baker v. Davis†	299 Mass. 345	69
1943	Berlandi v. Commonwealth†	314 Mass. 424	68
1936	Goldston v. Randolph†	293 Mass. 253	64
1936	Board of Assessors v. Suffolk Law School†	295 Mass. 489	63

Showing the 15 most-cited of 513 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 Fred Tarbell Field on?: Fred Tarbell Field was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Sources

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

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18 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).