How do judges of the Supreme Court of Maryland reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Supreme Court of Maryland / Joined 1982 / Served to 1987

James F. Couch Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Maryland

James F. Couch Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland, who joined the court in 1982. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1917–1990
Tenure: 1982–1987 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1982	Supreme Court of Maryland	–	–

Education

George Washington University

Judicial Record

In our data, Couch authored 105 published opinions for the court (1982–1987), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Johnson v. State (171 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. 106 of these were attributed to Couch 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	Johnson v. State†	495 A.2d 1	171
1986	Grandison v. State†	506 A.2d 580	149
1987	Harris v. Harris†	529 A.2d 356	99
1983	Poole v. State†	453 A.2d 1218	99
1983	Boblitz v. Boblitz· Dissent†	462 A.2d 506	95
1984	Colvin v. State†	472 A.2d 953	90
1986	State v. Lyles†	517 A.2d 761	87
1985	Whitehead v. Safway Steel Products, Inc.†	497 A.2d 803	79
1987	Martinez v. State†	522 A.2d 950	69
1987	Gore v. State†	522 A.2d 1338	66
1987	Brady v. Ralph Parsons Co.†	520 A.2d 717	65
1985	Blandon v. State†	498 A.2d 1195	65
1983	Harris v. State†	455 A.2d 979	59
1984	Guesfeird v. State†	480 A.2d 800	53
1984	DeJarnette v. Federal Kemper Insurance†	475 A.2d 454	53

Showing the 15 most-cited of 106 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 Supreme Court of Maryland reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was James F. Couch Jr. on?: James F. Couch Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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