How do judges of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is presidential appointment.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals / Joined 1977 / Served to 1997

John M. Ferren

Judge, District of Columbia Court of Appeals

John M. Ferren was a Judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1977–1997 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	District of Columbia Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Ferren authored 864 published opinions for the court (1977–2011), plus 48 dissents and 66 concurrences. Most cited: Peoples Drug Stores, Inc. v. District of Columbia (355 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. 466 of these were attributed to Ferren 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
1983	Peoples Drug Stores, Inc. v. District of Columbia†	470 A.2d 751	355
1990	Matter of Addams· Concurrence†	579 A.2d 190	255
1996	Johnson v. United States· Dissent†	683 A.2d 1087	210
1981	United States v. Edwards· Concurrence†	430 A.2d 1321	205
1979	Ibn-Tamas v. United States†	407 A.2d 626	186
1979	Frendak v. United States	408 A.2d 364	162
1982	District of Columbia v. White	442 A.2d 159	157
1994	Colbert v. Georgetown University	641 A.2d 469	154
1983	Morgan v. District of Columbia· Dissent†	468 A.2d 1306	150
1990	Williams v. Baker· Concurrence†	572 A.2d 1062	149
1980	Jackson v. District of Columbia	412 A.2d 948	146
1997	Carl v. Children's Hospital· Concurrence†	702 A.2d 159	140
1996	Diamond v. Davis· Concurrence†	680 A.2d 364	136
1979	Matter of Colson· Concurrence†	412 A.2d 1160	136
1993	King v. Kidd†	640 A.2d 656	134

Showing the 15 most-cited of 978 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 District of Columbia Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is presidential appointment.
Which court was John M. Ferren on?: John M. Ferren was a Judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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