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 1987 / Served to 2000

Joseph William Bellacosa

Judge, New York Court of Appeals

Joseph William Bellacosa was a Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1987. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1937 · age 89
Tenure: 1987–2000 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1987	New York Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception		1957
St John's University-New York	English	1959
St John's University-New York		1961

Judicial Record

In our data, Bellacosa authored 268 published opinions for the court (1987–2000), plus 96 dissents and 24 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Bleakley (13,541 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. 373 of these were attributed to Bellacosa 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
1987	People v. Bleakley†	69 N.Y.2d 490	13,541
1997	Morgan v. State†	685 N.E.2d 202	1,350
1988	Holtzman v. Goldman· Dissent†	71 N.Y.2d 564	1,255
1996	Gould v. New York City Police Department· Dissent†	675 N.E.2d 808	958
1987	People v. Moreno†	70 N.Y.2d 403	909
1989	Benitez v. New York City Board of Education†	73 N.Y.2d 650	820
1987	People v. Alejandro· Concurrence†	70 N.Y.2d 133	811
1993	People v. Holmes· Dissent†	619 N.E.2d 396	776
1993	People v. Bolden· Dissent†	81 N.Y.2d 146	698
1992	In re Michael B.· Concurrence†	80 N.Y.2d 299	538
1992	Lombardi v. Stout· Dissent†	80 N.Y.2d 290	501
2000	Lauer v. City of New York· Dissent†	733 N.E.2d 184	497
1991	Thompson v. Grumman Aerospace Corp.†	78 N.Y.2d 553	476
1991	People v. Duuvon†	77 N.Y.2d 541	475
1988	Parkview Associates v. City of New York†	71 N.Y.2d 274	461

Showing the 15 most-cited of 388 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 Joseph William Bellacosa on?: Joseph William Bellacosa 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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13 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).