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

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Vermont Supreme Court / Joined 1956 / Served to 1972

James Stuart Holden

Justice, Vermont Supreme Court

James Stuart Holden was a Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1956. He earned a law degree from Albany Law School in 1938. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1914–1996
Tenure: 1956–1972 · 16 yrs
Education: Dartmouth College 1935 · Albany Law School

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1956	Vermont Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Dartmouth College	A.B.	1935
Albany Law School	LL.B.	1938

Judicial Record

In our data, Holden authored 189 published opinions for the court (1956–1971), plus 11 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Goyet (70 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. 209 of these were attributed to Holden 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	State v. Goyet· Dissent†	132 A.2d 623	70
1957	Thompson v. Smith†	129 A.2d 638	63
1969	State v. Miner†	258 A.2d 815	57
1960	Mitchell v. Aldrich†	163 A.2d 833	54
1963	O'BRIEN v. Comstock Foods, Inc.†	194 A.2d 568	52
1967	Garafano v. Neshobe Beach Club, Inc.· Concurrence†	238 A.2d 70	43
1958	Town of Troy v. AMERICAN FIDELTY COMPANY· Dissent†	143 A.2d 469	40
1966	In Re Monaghan· Dissent†	222 A.2d 665	38
1969	State v. Bishop· Concurrence†	260 A.2d 393	37
1959	Dashnow v. Myers†	155 A.2d 859	36
1966	Crawford v. Lumbermen's Mutual Casualty Company†	220 A.2d 480	34
1960	State v. Coburn†	165 A.2d 349	34
1971	Bean v. Sears, Roebuck & Company†	276 A.2d 613	33
1958	Dean Thompson v. Green Mountain Power Corp†	144 A.2d 786	33
1968	Pioneer Credit Corporation v. Carden†	245 A.2d 891	32

Showing the 15 most-cited of 209 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 Vermont Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was James Stuart Holden on?: James Stuart Holden was a Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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