How do judges of the Massachusetts Appeals Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Massachusetts Appeals Court / Joined 1980 / Served to 1981

Joseph R. Nolan

Justice, Massachusetts Appeals Court

Joseph R. Nolan was a Justice of the Massachusetts Appeals Court, who joined the court in 1980. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1980–1981 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	Massachusetts Appeals Court	–	–

Education

Boston College

Judicial Record

In our data, Nolan authored 19 published opinions for the court (1980–1981). Most cited: Bicknell, Inc. v. Havlin (36 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. 5 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
1980	Bicknell, Inc. v. Havlin	402 N.E.2d 116	36
1981	Commonwealth v. Levin	417 N.E.2d 440	25
1980	Commonwealth v. Deagle	412 N.E.2d 911	20
1980	A. Leo Nash Steel Corp. v. Southern New England Steel Erection Co.	402 N.E.2d 71	14
1980	Bahceli v. Bahceli	409 N.E.2d 207	13
1980	Commonwealth v. Jimenez	409 N.E.2d 204	13
1980	Campbell v. Frontier Fishing & Hunting, Ltd.	405 N.E.2d 989	11
1980	Davenport v. Broadhurst	406 N.E.2d 1030	10
1980	Gauntlett v. Medical Parameters, Inc.	405 N.E.2d 1003	10
1980	Puma v. Gordon	402 N.E.2d 110	9
1980	Brown v. Sneider	400 N.E.2d 1323	8
1980	Farrington v. School Committee†	9 Mass. App. Ct. 474	6
1980	Commonwealth v. Guy	400 N.E.2d 1311	6
1980	South Middlesex Regional Vocational Technical School District Committee v. Superior Court†	9 Mass. App. Ct. 372	5
1981	Commonwealth v. Wright	415 N.E.2d 870	4

Showing the 15 most-cited of 19 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 Appeals 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 Appeals Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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