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

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Supreme Court of Maryland / Joined 2007 / Served to 2011

Joseph F. Murphy Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Maryland

Joseph F. Murphy Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland, who joined the court in 2007. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1944 · age 82
Tenure: 2007–2011 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2007	Supreme Court of Maryland	–	–

Education

Boston College

Judicial Record

In our data, Murphy authored 67 published opinions for the court (2008–2011), plus 28 dissents and 15 concurrences. Most cited: King v. State (85 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. 108 of these were attributed to Murphy 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
2009	King v. State· Dissent†	967 A.2d 790	85
2008	PEOPLE'S COUNSEL FOR BALTIMORE CTY. v. Loyola College· Concurrence†	956 A.2d 166	75
2011	Ruffin Hotel Corp. v. Gasper†	17 A.3d 676	69
2011	Lee v. State· Concurrence†	12 A.3d 1238	57
2008	Chesek v. Jones· Concurrence†	959 A.2d 795	52
2010	Cuffley v. State· Dissent†	7 A.3d 557	47
2010	State v. Rich†	3 A.3d 1210	47
2009	CSR, Ltd. v. Taylor· Dissent†	983 A.2d 492	45
2010	DRD Pool Service, Inc. v. Freed· Concurrence†	5 A.3d 45	43
2009	Brown v. Daniel Realty Co.· Concurrence†	976 A.2d 300	40
2010	Moore v. State· Concurrence†	989 A.2d 1150	39
2009	Belote v. State· Dissent†	981 A.2d 1247	36
2009	Cruz v. State· Dissent†	963 A.2d 1184	34
2011	Williams v. State· Concurrence†	10 A.3d 1167	33
2008	Starr v. State†	951 A.2d 87	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 110 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 Maryland reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Joseph F. Murphy Jr. on?: Joseph F. Murphy Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland.

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.

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