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 1961 / Served to 1972

Jacob Spiegel

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Jacob Spiegel was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1961. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1901–1984
Tenure: 1961–1972 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1961	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Spiegel authored 336 published opinions for the court (1961–1972), plus 8 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Beneficial Finance Company (189 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. 90 of these were attributed to Spiegel 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
1971	Commonwealth v. Beneficial Finance Company	275 N.E.2d 33	189
1971	Commonwealth v. De Christoforo· Dissent†	277 N.E.2d 100	147
1970	Freelander v. G. & K. REALTY CORP.	258 N.E.2d 786	106
1966	Commonwealth v. Nassar	218 N.E.2d 72	89
1969	Commonwealth v. Leis†	355 Mass. 189	86
1964	Ryan v. Stavros	203 N.E.2d 85	85
1967	Commonwealth v. Woods Hole, Martha's Vineyard & Nantucket Steamship Authority†	352 Mass. 617	81
1965	Commonwealth v. Monahan	207 N.E.2d 29	79
1963	Commonwealth v. Fatalo	191 N.E.2d 479	76
1962	Commonwealth v. D'AGOSTINO	182 N.E.2d 133	75
1965	Almeida Bus Lines, Inc. v. Department of Public Utilities	203 N.E.2d 556	73
1972	Turnpike Realty Co. v. Town of Dedham	284 N.E.2d 891	71
1969	Insurance Rating Board v. Commissioner of Insurance	248 N.E.2d 500	69
1969	Gulf Oil Corp. v. Board of Appeals of Framingham	244 N.E.2d 311	66
1967	Labounty v. Vickers	225 N.E.2d 333	66

Showing the 15 most-cited of 345 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 Jacob Spiegel on?: Jacob Spiegel 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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11 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).