How do judges of the New York Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New York Court of Appeals / Joined 1865 / Served to 1867

John Kilham Porter

Judge, New York Court of Appeals

John Kilham Porter was a Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1865. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1865–1867 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1865	New York Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Porter authored 116 published opinions for the court (1865–1867), plus 2 concurrences. Most cited: Hoffman v. Ætna Fire Insurance (161 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. 32 of these were attributed to Porter 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
1865	Hoffman v. Ætna Fire Insurance	32 N.Y. 405	161
1866	Clapp v. . Fullerton	34 N.Y. 190	131
1866	Tyler v. . Gardiner	35 N.Y. 559	92
1866	Bascom v. . Albertson	34 N.Y. 584	84
1866	Ernst v. . Hudson River Railroad Co.	35 N.Y. 9	83
1865	Mead v. . Bunn	32 N.Y. 275	79
1865	Gt. W. Turnpike Co. v. . Loomis	32 N.Y. 127	76
1865	Harlem Gas Co. v. . Mayor, C., of N.Y.	33 N.Y. 309	72
1865	Moses v. . Bierling	31 N.Y. 462	71
1866	The People v. . Gonzalez	35 N.Y. 49	69
1866	Merrick v. . Van Santvoord	34 N.Y. 208	64
1867	Baskin v. . Baskin	36 N.Y. 416	52
1866	Rockwell v. . Nearing	35 N.Y. 302	49
1867	Dunham v. . Williams	37 N.Y. 251	46
1865	Hulett v. . Swift	33 N.Y. 571	45

Showing the 15 most-cited of 118 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 York Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was John Kilham Porter on?: John Kilham Porter was a Judge of the New York 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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2 years on the New York Court of Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).