How do judges of the New Jersey Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New Jersey Supreme Court / Joined 2000 / Served to 2007

James Ronald Zazzali

Justice, New Jersey Supreme Court

James Ronald Zazzali was a Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2000. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1937 · age 89
Tenure: 2000–2007 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2000	New Jersey Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Georgetown University

Judicial Record

In our data, Zazzali authored 92 published opinions for the court (2001–2007), plus 14 dissents and 12 concurrences. Most cited: New Jersey Division of Youth & Family Services v. M.M. (699 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. 31 of these were attributed to Zazzali 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
2007	New Jersey Division of Youth & Family Services v. M.M.	914 A.2d 1265	699
2007	Iliadis v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.	922 A.2d 710	322
2004	State v. Reddish	859 A.2d 1173	313
2003	Dzwonar v. McDevitt	828 A.2d 893	260
2002	O'CONNELL v. State	795 A.2d 857	257
2004	State v. Jenkins	840 A.2d 242	228
2002	State v. Stovall	788 A.2d 746	225
2002	Shepherd v. Hunterdon Developmental Center· Concurrence†	803 A.2d 611	206
2002	State v. Goodwin	803 A.2d 102	197
2002	State v. Nelson	803 A.2d 1	182
2003	Ferreira v. Rancocas Orthopedic Associates· Concurrence†	836 A.2d 779	171
2006	HOJNOWSKI EX REL. HOJNOWSKI v. Vans Skate Park	901 A.2d 381	159
2001	State v. Koskovich· Concurrence†	776 A.2d 144	157
2007	State v. Williams· Dissent†	919 A.2d 90	151
2004	State v. Daniels	861 A.2d 808	139

Showing the 15 most-cited of 118 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 Jersey Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was James Ronald Zazzali on?: James Ronald Zazzali was a Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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