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 2011 / Active

Frenande R.V. Duffly

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Frenande R.V. Duffly is a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, serving since 2011. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1949 · age 77
Tenure: Since 2011 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2011	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

University of Connecticut
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Duffly authored 116 published opinions for the court (2011–2016), plus 3 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Jones-Pannell (141 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. 118 of these were attributed to Duffly 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
2015	Commonwealth v. Jones-Pannell†	472 Mass. 429	141
2014	Polay v. McMahon†	468 Mass. 379	86
2014	Commonwealth v. DeJesus†	468 Mass. 174	77
2012	Lopez v. Commonwealth†	463 Mass. 696	75
2012	Roman v. Trustees of Tufts College†	461 Mass. 707	72
2014	Zaleski v. Zaleski†	469 Mass. 230	66
2011	Bank of New York v. Bailey	460 Mass. 327	66
2014	Galiastro v. Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.†	467 Mass. 160	63
2013	Commonwealth v. Marinho· Concurrence†	464 Mass. 115	63
2016	Commonwealth v. Grady†	474 Mass. 715	61
2015	Chin v. Merriot†	470 Mass. 527	57
2013	Kraft Power Corp. v. Merrill†	464 Mass. 145	53
2011	Commonwealth v. Perez	460 Mass. 683	47
2012	Commonwealth v. Escalera†	462 Mass. 636	45
2014	Commonwealth v. Carriere†	470 Mass. 1	44

Showing the 15 most-cited of 122 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 is Frenande R.V. Duffly on?: Frenande R.V. Duffly is a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Sources

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

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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).