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 1999 / Served to 2011

Judith Cathy Arnold Cowin

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Judith Cathy Arnold Cowin was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1999. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1942 · age 84
Tenure: 1999–2011 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1999	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Wellesley College
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Cowin authored 263 published opinions for the court (1999–2011), plus 31 dissents and 18 concurrences. Most cited: Iannacchino v. Ford Motor Co. (574 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. 297 of these were attributed to Cowin 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
2008	Iannacchino v. Ford Motor Co.· Concurrence†	451 Mass. 623	574
2002	Commonwealth v. Randolph†	438 Mass. 290	273
2000	Schaer v. Brandeis University· Dissent†	432 Mass. 474	255
2002	Jarosz v. Palmer†	436 Mass. 526	246
2006	Carey v. New England Organ Bank†	446 Mass. 270	236
2004	Commonwealth v. Scott†	440 Mass. 642	225
2005	Commonwealth v. King†	445 Mass. 217	211
2011	Boston Gas Co. v. Board of Assessors†	458 Mass. 715	190
2001	Harrison v. NetCentric Corp.†	433 Mass. 465	183
2009	Commonwealth v. Zanetti· Dissent†	454 Mass. 449	170
2007	Blackstone v. Cashman· Dissent†	448 Mass. 255	169
2002	Ng Bros. Construction, Inc. v. Cranney†	436 Mass. 638	153
2002	Blixt v. Blixt· Dissent†	437 Mass. 649	140
2003	Ravnikar v. Bogojavlensky†	438 Mass. 627	136
2005	Iamele v. Asselin†	444 Mass. 734	135

Showing the 15 most-cited of 312 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 Judith Cathy Arnold Cowin on?: Judith Cathy Arnold Cowin was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Sources

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

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11 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).