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 1947 / Served to 1962

Harold P. Williams

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Harold P. Williams was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1947. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1882–1963
Tenure: 1947–1962 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1947	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Harvard University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Williams authored 470 published opinions for the court (1947–1962). Most cited: Commonwealth v. Bonomi (121 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. 155 of these were attributed to Williams 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
1957	Commonwealth v. Bonomi	140 N.E.2d 140	121
1959	Commonwealth v. Greenberg	160 N.E.2d 181	108
1949	Commonwealth v. Novicki†	324 Mass. 461	71
1959	August A. Busch & Co. of Massachusetts, Inc. v. Liberty Mutual Insurance	158 N.E.2d 351	68
1948	Biggs v. Densmore†	323 Mass. 106	68
1957	Commonwealth v. Devlin	141 N.E.2d 269	67
1960	Keyes v. Construction Service, Inc.	165 N.E.2d 912	65
1948	Commonwealth v. Galvin†	323 Mass. 205	62
1955	Commonwealth v. Lussier	128 N.E.2d 569	61
1952	Elliott v. Warwick Stores, Inc.	108 N.E.2d 681	59
1950	Hiller v. Submarine Signal Co.	91 N.E.2d 667	53
1951	Rubin v. Town of Arlington	99 N.E.2d 30	49
1949	LeBlanc v. Atlantic Building & Supply Co.†	323 Mass. 702	49
1955	Commonwealth v. Ronchetti	128 N.E.2d 334	48
1952	Dalton v. Post Publishing Co.	105 N.E.2d 385	45

Showing the 15 most-cited of 470 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 Harold P. Williams on?: Harold P. Williams was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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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).