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

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Maine Supreme Judicial Court / Joined 1994 / Served to 1998

Kermit Victor Lipez

Justice, Maine Supreme Judicial Court

Kermit Victor Lipez was a Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1994. He earned a law degree from Yale University in 1967. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1941 · age 85
Tenure: 1994–1998 · 4 yrs
Education: Haverford College 1963 · Yale

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1994	Maine Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Haverford College	B.A.	1963
Yale University	LL.B.	1967

Judicial Record

In our data, Lipez authored 146 published opinions for the court (1994–1998), plus 23 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Champagne v. Mid-Maine Medical Center (199 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. 173 of these were attributed to Lipez 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
1998	Champagne v. Mid-Maine Medical Center†	1998 ME 87	199
1995	Centamore v. Department of Human Services†	664 A.2d 369	107
1997	Searles v. Trustees of St. Joseph's College†	695 A.2d 1206	98
1995	Twigg v. Town of Kennebunk†	662 A.2d 914	91
1995	Plimpton v. Gerrard†	668 A.2d 882	87
1996	State v. Stade· Dissent†	683 A.2d 164	57
1997	Johnson v. Samson Constr. Corp.†	1997 ME 220	56
1995	Thomas v. Thompson†	653 A.2d 417	53
1996	Glidden v. Belden†	684 A.2d 1306	46
1997	Laferriere v. State†	1997 ME 169	45
1995	Dasha Ex Rel. Dasha v. Maine Medical Center· Dissent†	665 A.2d 993	39
1997	Cottle Enterprises, Inc. v. Town of Farmington†	1997 ME 78	38
1995	Lovely v. Allstate Insurance Co.· Concurrence†	658 A.2d 1091	37
1997	Panasonic Communications & Systems Co. v. State, Department of Administration, Bureau of Purchases†	1997 ME 43	33
1996	Town of Union v. Strong†	681 A.2d 14	33

Showing the 15 most-cited of 173 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 Maine Supreme Judicial Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Kermit Victor Lipez on?: Kermit Victor Lipez was a Justice of the Maine 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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4 years on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).