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 2007 / Active

Margot Botsford

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Margot Botsford is a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, serving since 2007. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1947 · age 79
Tenure: Since 2007 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2007	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Barnard College

Judicial Record

In our data, Botsford authored 233 published opinions for the court (2007–2017), plus 6 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: L.L., a juvenile v. Commonwealth (587 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. 225 of these were attributed to Botsford 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
2014	L.L., a juvenile v. Commonwealth†	470 Mass. 169	587
2008	Iannacchino v. Ford Motor Co.†	451 Mass. 623	574
2012	Eaton v. Federal National Mortgage Ass'n†	462 Mass. 569	194
2017	Genentech, Inc. v. Commissioner of Revenue†	476 Mass. 258	177
2016	Verizon New England, Inc. v. Board of Assessors of Boston†	475 Mass. 826	176
2011	Psy-Ed Corporation v. KLEIN HIRSCH	459 Mass. 697	152
2009	Commonwealth v. Vick· Concurrence†	454 Mass. 418	117
2010	Commonwealth v. Cohen	456 Mass. 94	116
2008	Bank v. Thermo Elemental Inc.†	451 Mass. 638	99
2015	Pinti v. Emigrant Mortgage Co., Inc.†	472 Mass. 226	96
2014	Weiler v. PortfolioScope, Inc.†	469 Mass. 75	90
2014	Commonwealth v. Augustine†	467 Mass. 230	89
2009	Commonwealth v. Avila†	454 Mass. 744	89
2013	Tyler v. Michaels Stores, Inc.†	464 Mass. 492	84
2017	Commonwealth v. Oberle†	476 Mass. 539	82

Showing the 15 most-cited of 244 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 is Margot Botsford on?: Margot Botsford is a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Sources

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

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18 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).