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 1905 / Served to 1920

Nicholas Charles Burke

Justice, Supreme Court of Maryland

Nicholas Charles Burke was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland, who joined the court in 1905. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1854–1923
Tenure: 1905–1920 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1905	Supreme Court of Maryland	–	–

Education

Saint Mary's College

Judicial Record

In our data, Burke authored 325 published opinions for the court (1905–1920), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Harrison v. Central Construction Co. (89 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. 15 of these were attributed to Burke 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
1919	Harrison v. Central Construction Co.	108 A. 874	89
1909	Lanasa v. State	71 A. 1053	84
1909	McGaw v. Acker, Merrall & Condit Co.	73 A. 731	69
1907	Vanderford v. Farmers' & Mechanics' National Bank	66 A. 47	58
1913	Cumberland Glass Manufacturing Co. v. DeWitt	87 A. 927	56
1913	Painter v. Mattfeldt	87 A. 413	56
1907	Esterline v. State	66 A. 269	54
1914	Dixon v. Dixon	90 A. 846	39
1909	Qdweyler v. Gibson	73 A. 261	39
1907	Geiselman v. Schmidt	68 A. 202	39
1908	Pennsylvania Steel Co. v. Wilkinson	69 A. 412	38
1907	Coyne v. Supreme Conclave of the Improved Order of Heptasophs	66 A. 704	37
1911	Sumwalt Ice & Coal Co. v. Knickerbocker Ice Co.	80 A. 48	35
1919	Snowden v. State	106 A. 5	34
1915	Mayor of Aldermen v. Stallings	93 A. 974	34

Showing the 15 most-cited of 326 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 Nicholas Charles Burke on?: Nicholas Charles Burke was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland.

Sources

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

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14 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).