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 1957 / Served to 1972

John J. Francis

Justice, New Jersey Supreme Court

John J. Francis was a Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1957. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1903 · age 123
Tenure: 1957–1972 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1957	New Jersey Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Rutgers University-Camden

Judicial Record

In our data, Francis authored 206 published opinions for the court (1957–1972), plus 22 dissents and 12 concurrences. Most cited: Henningsen v. Bloomfield Motors, Inc. (786 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. 44 of these were attributed to Francis 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
1960	Henningsen v. Bloomfield Motors, Inc.	161 A.2d 69	786
1965	Santor v. a & M KARAGHEUSIAN, INC.	207 A.2d 305	357
1961	Mazzilli v. Acc. & Cas. Ins. Co. of Winterthur	170 A.2d 800	225
1965	Cintrone v. Hertz Truck Leasing & Rental Service	212 A.2d 769	202
1969	State v. Manley	255 A.2d 193	195
1969	State v. Hock	257 A.2d 699	194
1971	State v. Thompson	283 A.2d 513	190
1958	Botta v. Brunner	138 A.2d 713	182
1967	Ellsworth Dobbs, Inc. v. Johnson	236 A.2d 843	178
1958	State v. Butler	143 A.2d 530	173
1963	Ruvolo v. American Casualty Co.	189 A.2d 204	170
1971	Kugler v. Romain	279 A.2d 640	162
1972	State v. Hampton	294 A.2d 23	156
1972	New Jersey Sports & Exposition Authority v. McCrane	292 A.2d 545	153
1970	Immer v. Risko· Dissent†	267 A.2d 481	153

Showing the 15 most-cited of 240 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 John J. Francis on?: John J. Francis 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.

15 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).