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

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Supreme Court of Delaware / Joined 1974 / Served to 1986

John J. McNeilly Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Delaware

John J. McNeilly Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Delaware, who joined the court in 1974. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1974–1986 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

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

Judicial Record

In our data, McNeilly authored 187 published opinions for the court (1974–1986), plus 4 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: Smith v. Van Gorkom (428 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. 193 of these were attributed to McNeilly 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
1985	Smith v. Van Gorkom· Dissent†	488 A.2d 858	428
1979	Bey v. State†	402 A.2d 362	270
1981	Hughes v. State· Concurrence†	437 A.2d 559	172
1985	Moran v. Household International, Inc.†	500 A.2d 1346	170
1979	Wife (J. F. v. v. Husband (O. W. v. Jr.)†	402 A.2d 1202	170
1977	Singer v. Magnavox Co.· Concurrence†	380 A.2d 969	161
1984	Flamer v. State†	490 A.2d 104	149
1985	Coastal Barge Corp. v. Coastal Zone Industrial Control Board†	492 A.2d 1242	134
1982	Kofron v. Amoco Chemicals Corp.†	441 A.2d 226	121
1977	Judah v. Delaware Trust Co.†	378 A.2d 624	111
1986	Lipton v. News International, Plc†	514 A.2d 1075	79
1974	Isaacson, Stolper & Co. v. Artisan's Savings Bank†	330 A.2d 130	79
1985	Deputy v. State· Concurrence†	500 A.2d 581	73
1986	Diaz v. State†	508 A.2d 861	66
1985	Kaplan v. Wyatt†	499 A.2d 1184	64

Showing the 15 most-cited of 196 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 Delaware reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was John J. McNeilly Jr. on?: John J. McNeilly Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Delaware.

Sources

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

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