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

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Connecticut Supreme Court / Joined 1965 / Served to 1981

John P. Cotter

Justice, Connecticut Supreme Court

John P. Cotter was a Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1965. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1911–1993
Tenure: 1965–1981 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1965	Connecticut Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Trinity College
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Cotter authored 505 published opinions for the court (1965–1981), plus 13 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Sheets v. Teddy's Frosted Foods, Inc. (532 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. 42 of these were attributed to Cotter 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
1980	Sheets v. Teddy's Frosted Foods, Inc.	179 Conn. 471	532
1980	Alarm Applications Co. v. Simsbury Volunteer Fire Co.	179 Conn. 541	415
1980	Amodio v. Cunningham	182 Conn. 80	366
1979	Yanow v. Teal Industries, Inc.	178 Conn. 262	331
1979	Hopson v. St. Mary's Hospital	176 Conn. 485	250
1980	Feinson v. Conservation Commission	180 Conn. 421	234
1978	Mystic Marinelife Aquarium, Inc. v. Gill	175 Conn. 483	231
1980	State v. Whistnant	179 Conn. 576	230
1980	Whittaker v. Zoning Board of Appeals	179 Conn. 650	220
1979	State v. Piskorski	177 Conn. 677	212
1981	Miller v. Appleby	183 Conn. 51	208
1978	Vandersluis v. Weil	176 Conn. 353	200
1980	Robinson v. Unemployment Security Board of Review	181 Conn. 1	192
1978	Town Bank & Trust Co. v. Benson	176 Conn. 304	189
1980	State v. Januszewski	182 Conn. 142	184

Showing the 15 most-cited of 519 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 Connecticut Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was John P. Cotter on?: John P. Cotter was a Justice of the Connecticut 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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15 years on the Connecticut Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).