How do judges of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court / Joined 1981 / Served to 1995

Joseph R. Nolan

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Joseph R. Nolan was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1981. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1926–2013
Tenure: 1981–1995 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1981	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Boston College
Boston College

Judicial Record

In our data, Nolan authored 509 published opinions for the court (1981–1995), plus 78 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Pederson v. Time, Inc. (2,012 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. 211 of these were attributed to Nolan 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
1989	Pederson v. Time, Inc.	532 N.E.2d 1211	2,012
1994	Commonwealth v. Flebotte	630 N.E.2d 265	396
1991	Riley v. Presnell	565 N.E.2d 780	293
1985	Madsen v. Erwin	481 N.E.2d 1160	280
1991	Correllas v. Viveiros	572 N.E.2d 7	253
1981	Gram v. Liberty Mutual Insurance· Dissent†	429 N.E.2d 21	249
1995	Starr v. Fordham†	420 Mass. 178	233
1984	Irwin v. Town of Ware· Dissent†	467 N.E.2d 1292	228
1994	Sena v. Commonwealth	629 N.E.2d 986	223
1983	Nei v. Burley	446 N.E.2d 674	213
1989	Boston Symphony Orchestra, Inc. v. Commercial Union Insurance	545 N.E.2d 1156	207
1986	J. A. Sullivan Corp. v. Commonwealth	494 N.E.2d 374	207
1992	Schwanbeck v. Federal-Mogul Corp.	592 N.E.2d 1289	198
1990	Commonwealth v. Durling	551 N.E.2d 1193	192
1995	Commonwealth v. Mello†	420 Mass. 375	183

Showing the 15 most-cited of 591 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 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Joseph R. Nolan on?: Joseph R. Nolan was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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