How do judges of the New York Appellate Division reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New York Appellate Division / Joined 1962 / Served to 1981

James D. Hopkins

Justice, New York Appellate Division

James D. Hopkins was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division, who joined the court in 1962. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1962–1981 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1962	New York Appellate Division	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Hopkins authored 135 published opinions for the court (1962–1981), plus 38 dissents and 17 concurrences. Most cited: Auerbach v. Bennett (263 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. 186 of these were attributed to Hopkins 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
1978	Auerbach v. Bennett†	64 A.D.2d 98	263
1973	People v. Clayton†	41 A.D.2d 204	235
1964	Rottkamp v. Young	21 A.D.2d 373	114
1980	People v. Thomas	74 A.D.2d 317	91
1968	Siegel v. Kranis†	29 A.D.2d 477	88
1971	Ripp v. Ripp†	38 A.D.2d 65	85
1977	Industralease Automated & Scientific Equipment Corp. v. R. M. E. Enterprises, Inc.†	58 A.D.2d 482	66
1979	Julien J. Studley, Inc. v. Lefrak†	66 A.D.2d 208	62
1980	Bartels v. County of Westchester†	76 A.D.2d 517	59
1976	Pagan v. Goldberger†	51 A.D.2d 508	54
1981	DeAngelis v. Lutheran Medical Center	84 A.D.2d 17	53
1964	Musco v. Conte†	22 A.D.2d 121	52
1975	Read v. Sacco†	49 A.D.2d 471	50
1976	860 Executive Towers, Inc. v. Board of Assessors†	53 A.D.2d 463	49
1975	Mobil Oil Corp. v. Rubenfeld†	48 A.D.2d 428	42

Showing the 15 most-cited of 190 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 Appellate Division reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was James D. Hopkins on?: James D. Hopkins was a Justice of the New York Appellate Division.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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