How do judges of the Supreme Court of Maryland reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Supreme Court of Maryland / Joined 1968 / Served to 1986

Marvin H. Smith

Justice, Supreme Court of Maryland

Marvin H. Smith was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland, who joined the court in 1968. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1916–2010
Tenure: 1968–1986 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1968	Supreme Court of Maryland	–	–

Education

Washington College

Judicial Record

In our data, Smith authored 513 published opinions for the court (1968–2003), plus 45 dissents and 9 concurrences. Most cited: Reed v. State (224 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. 524 of these were attributed to Smith 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
1978	Reed v. State· Dissent†	391 A.2d 364	224
1976	Ross v. State· Dissent†	350 A.2d 680	201
1980	Berkey v. Delia†	413 A.2d 170	172
1981	Schultz v. Pritts· Concurrence†	432 A.2d 1319	132
1980	State v. Hutchinson· Dissent†	411 A.2d 1035	131
1977	Police Commissioner v. Dowling†	379 A.2d 1007	122
1971	St. Paul at Chase Corp. v. Manufacturers Life Insurance†	278 A.2d 12	121
1983	Calhoun v. State†	468 A.2d 45	119
1972	Bartholomey v. State· Dissent†	297 A.2d 696	115
1980	General Motors Corp. v. Lahocki†	410 A.2d 1039	102
1982	Board of Educ., Garrett Co. v. Lendo†	453 A.2d 1185	97
1986	Bloodsworth v. State†	512 A.2d 1056	96
1979	Resetar v. State Board of Education†	399 A.2d 225	92
1983	Sigma Reproductive Health Center v. State†	467 A.2d 483	90
1973	In Re Formal Inquiry Concerning Judge Diener· Dissent†	304 A.2d 587	90

Showing the 15 most-cited of 567 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 Supreme Court of Maryland reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Marvin H. Smith on?: Marvin H. Smith was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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18 years on the Supreme Court of Maryland. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).