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 2000 / Served to 2007

Martha B. Sosman

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Martha B. Sosman was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 2000. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1950–2007
Tenure: 2000–2007 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2000	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Middlebury College

Judicial Record

In our data, Sosman authored 104 published opinions for the court (2000–2007), plus 12 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: Goodridge v. Department of Public Health (186 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. 127 of these were attributed to Sosman 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
2003	Goodridge v. Department of Public Health· Dissent†	440 Mass. 309	186
2004	Commonwealth v. DiGiambattista†	442 Mass. 423	167
2004	Mole v. University of Massachusetts†	442 Mass. 582	164
2002	Commonwealth v. Jimenez· Dissent†	438 Mass. 213	163
2002	Blixt v. Blixt· Dissent†	437 Mass. 649	140
2001	Commonwealth v. Groome†	435 Mass. 201	117
2001	Commonwealth v. Fisher†	433 Mass. 340	101
2001	Commonwealth v. Barros· Concurrence†	435 Mass. 171	94
2004	Commonwealth v. Goodreau†	442 Mass. 341	93
2005	Commonwealth v. Gonsalves· Concurrence†	445 Mass. 1	89
2005	Kobrin v. Gastfriend· Dissent†	443 Mass. 327	85
2004	Stonehill College v. Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination· Concurrence†	441 Mass. 549	85
2001	City of Lynn v. Thompson†	435 Mass. 54	85
2002	Ciardi v. F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Ltd.· Dissent†	436 Mass. 53	76
2001	Commonwealth v. Sinforoso†	434 Mass. 320	74

Showing the 15 most-cited of 127 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 Martha B. Sosman on?: Martha B. Sosman 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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6 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).