How do judges of the New York Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New York Court of Appeals / Joined 1992 / Served to 2006

George Bundy Smith

Judge, New York Court of Appeals

George Bundy Smith was a Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1992. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1937 · age 89
Tenure: 1992–2006 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1992	New York Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Yale University
Yale University

Judicial Record

In our data, Smith authored 176 published opinions for the court (1992–2002), plus 55 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Benevento (4,938 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. 225 of these were attributed to Smith 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
1998	People v. Benevento†	697 N.E.2d 584	4,938
1995	People v. Gray†	652 N.E.2d 919	3,217
1996	Lama Holding Co. v. Smith Barney Inc.†	668 N.E.2d 1370	1,127
1998	Majewski v. Broadalbin-Perth Central School District†	696 N.E.2d 978	892
1992	Liberman v. Gelstein· Dissent†	80 N.Y.2d 429	838
2001	People v. Robinson	767 N.E.2d 638	738
2001	People v. Hines· Dissent†	762 N.E.2d 329	726
2001	Buechel v. Bain†	766 N.E.2d 914	643
2001	People v. Rosen†	752 N.E.2d 844	554
2000	Lauer v. City of New York· Dissent†	733 N.E.2d 184	497
1999	Amabile v. City of Buffalo†	715 N.E.2d 104	481
1999	People v. Alomar†	711 N.E.2d 958	454
1997	Ferrante v. American Lung Ass'n†	687 N.E.2d 1308	374
1996	People v. Batista†	672 N.E.2d 581	374
1996	Matter of Yolanda D.†	673 N.E.2d 1228	371

Showing the 15 most-cited of 239 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 New York Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was George Bundy Smith on?: George Bundy Smith was a Judge of the New York Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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14 years on the New York Court of Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).