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

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Vermont Supreme Court / Joined 1987 / Former Justice

John A. Dooley III

Justice, Vermont Supreme Court

John A. Dooley III was a Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1987. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1944 · age 82
Tenure: 1987 · 39 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1987	Vermont Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Union College
Boston College

Judicial Record

In our data, Dooley authored 737 published opinions for the court (1987–2018), plus 112 dissents and 79 concurrences. Most cited: Robertson v. Mylan Laboratories, Inc. (315 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. 799 of these were attributed to Dooley 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
2004	Robertson v. Mylan Laboratories, Inc.†	2004 VT 15	315
1999	Baker v. State· Concurrence†	744 A.2d 864	168
1988	In re S.B.L.†	150 Vt. 294	133
1990	Trepanier v. Getting Organized, Inc.†	583 A.2d 583	122
1995	In Re Stowe Club Highlands†	668 A.2d 1271	121
1989	In re M.C.P.†	153 Vt. 275	119
1993	Winey v. William E. Dailey, Inc.†	636 A.2d 744	106
1991	In Re Maple Tree Place†	594 A.2d 404	106
1991	Silva v. Stevens†	589 A.2d 852	105
1990	Toys, Inc. v. F.M. Burlington Co.†	582 A.2d 123	103
2008	In Re Appeal of Trahan Nov†	2008 VT 90	95
1995	Shields v. Gerhart†	658 A.2d 924	94
1995	Kanaan v. Kanaan†	659 A.2d 128	91
2000	In Re Handy	764 A.2d 1226	88
1995	Morrisseau v. Fayette†	670 A.2d 820	87

Showing the 15 most-cited of 928 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 John A. Dooley III on?: John A. Dooley III 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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39 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).