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

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Supreme Court of Maryland / Joined 1974 / Served to 2003

John C. Eldridge

Justice, Supreme Court of Maryland

John C. Eldridge was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland, who joined the court in 1974. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1933 · age 93
Tenure: 1974–2003 · 29 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1974	Supreme Court of Maryland	–	–

Education

Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Eldridge authored 507 published opinions for the court (1974–2012), plus 121 dissents and 54 concurrences. Most cited: Owens-Illinois, Inc. v. Zenobia (337 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. 673 of these were attributed to Eldridge 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
1992	Owens-Illinois, Inc. v. Zenobia†	601 A.2d 633	337
1975	Brohawn v. Transamerica Insurance†	347 A.2d 842	283
1995	Ashton v. Brown†	339 Md. 70	272
1990	Heat & Power Corp. v. Air Products & Chemicals, Inc.· Concurrence†	578 A.2d 1202	268
1994	United Parcel Service, Inc. v. People's Counsel†	336 Md. 569	250
1999	Board of Physician Quality Assurance v. Banks†	729 A.2d 376	227
1978	Reed v. State†	391 A.2d 364	224
1976	Phipps v. General Motors Corp.†	363 A.2d 955	219
1978	Bulluck v. Pelham Wood Apartments†	390 A.2d 1119	212
1981	Williams v. State†	438 A.2d 1301	209
1992	Murphy v. Edmonds†	601 A.2d 102	192
1977	Newton v. State†	373 A.2d 262	189
1983	Hauch v. Connor†	453 A.2d 1207	186
1994	Alexander & Alexander Inc. v. B. Dixon Evander & Associates, Inc.†	336 Md. 635	182
1995	Alleco Inc. v. Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, Inc.†	340 Md. 176	175

Showing the 15 most-cited of 682 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 Supreme Court of Maryland reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was John C. Eldridge on?: John C. Eldridge was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland.

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.

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