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 1972 / Served to 1999

Herbert P. Wilkins

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Herbert P. Wilkins was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1972. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1929 · age 97
Tenure: 1972–1999 · 27 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1972	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Harvard University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Wilkins authored 970 published opinions for the court (1972–1999), plus 24 dissents and 30 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Upton (401 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. 366 of these were attributed to Wilkins 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
1985	Commonwealth v. Upton	476 N.E.2d 548	401
1986	Commonwealth v. Grace	491 N.E.2d 246	371
1992	Commonwealth v. Wright	584 N.E.2d 621	357
1987	Commonwealth v. Kozec	505 N.E.2d 519	348
1975	Donahue v. Rodd Electrotype Co. of New England, Inc.· Concurrence†	328 N.E.2d 505	335
1985	Bushkin Associates, Inc. v. Raytheon Co.	473 N.E.2d 662	308
1990	United Truck Leasing Corp. v. Geltman	551 N.E.2d 20	304
1994	Commonwealth v. Lanigan†	419 Mass. 15	289
1990	Hazen Paper Co. v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co.	555 N.E.2d 576	251
1981	Gram v. Liberty Mutual Insurance	429 N.E.2d 21	249
1980	Ferriter v. Daniel O'Connell's Sons, Inc.· Dissent†	413 N.E.2d 690	249
1990	Bowen v. Eli Lilly & Co.	557 N.E.2d 739	243
1976	Wheelock College v. Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination	355 N.E.2d 309	231
1978	Commonwealth v. Adams	375 N.E.2d 681	224
1993	Polaroid Corp. v. the Travelers Indemnity Co.	610 N.E.2d 912	219

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,024 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 Herbert P. Wilkins on?: Herbert P. Wilkins 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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27 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).