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 1981 / Served to 2000

Neil L. Lynch

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Neil L. Lynch was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1981. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1930 · age 96
Tenure: 1981–2000 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1981	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Harvard University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Lynch authored 658 published opinions for the court (1981–2000), plus 55 dissents and 22 concurrences. Most cited: LaLonde v. Eissner (613 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. 345 of these were attributed to Lynch 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
1989	LaLonde v. Eissner	539 N.E.2d 538	613
1991	Augat, Inc. v. Liberty Mutual Insurance	571 N.E.2d 357	450
1985	Commonwealth v. Upton· Dissent†	476 N.E.2d 548	401
1982	Payton v. Abbott Labs	437 N.E.2d 171	399
1982	Commonwealth v. Bradshaw	431 N.E.2d 880	232
1987	College-Town, Division of Interco, Inc. v. Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination· Dissent†	508 N.E.2d 587	228
1982	White v. Peabody Construction Co., Inc.	434 N.E.2d 1015	205
1983	Manning v. Zuckerman	444 N.E.2d 1262	203
1982	Danca v. Taunton Savings Bank	429 N.E.2d 1129	193
1993	Custody of Eleanor	610 N.E.2d 938	191
1989	Robertson v. Gaston Snow & Ely Bartlett	536 N.E.2d 344	180
1982	Rae v. Air-Speed, Inc.	435 N.E.2d 628	180
1996	Green v. Wyman-Gordon Co.†	422 Mass. 551	178
1994	Charland v. Muzi Motors, Inc.	631 N.E.2d 555	175
1992	Flint v. Commissioner of Public Welfare	589 N.E.2d 1224	162

Showing the 15 most-cited of 735 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 Neil L. Lynch on?: Neil L. Lynch 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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19 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).