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 1960 / Served to 1970

Paul Grattan Kirk Sr.

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Paul Grattan Kirk Sr. was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1960. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1904–1982
Tenure: 1960–1970 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1960	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Harvard University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Kirk authored 241 published opinions for the court (1961–1970), plus 7 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: Singarella v. City of Boston (128 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. 52 of these were attributed to Kirk 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
1961	Singarella v. City of Boston	173 N.E.2d 290	128
1965	Stella v. Curtis	204 N.E.2d 457	119
1966	Commonwealth v. Kendrick	218 N.E.2d 408	112
1969	Commonwealth v. McKenna	244 N.E.2d 560	107
1970	Commonwealth v. Connolly· Concurrence†	255 N.E.2d 191	99
1964	Commonwealth v. Kiernan	201 N.E.2d 504	98
1968	Home Owners Federal Savings & Loan Ass'n v. Northwestern Fire & Marine Insurance· Dissent†	238 N.E.2d 55	90
1969	Commonwealth v. Leis· Concurrence†	355 Mass. 189	86
1961	Sherman v. EMPLOYERS'LIABILITY ASSURANCE CORP. LTD.	178 N.E.2d 864	83
1965	Commonwealth v. Stasiun· Dissent†	206 N.E.2d 672	80
1965	Lee v. Allied Sports Associates, Inc.	209 N.E.2d 329	74
1962	Commonwealth v. Slaney	185 N.E.2d 919	74
1968	Commonwealth v. Medeiros	236 N.E.2d 642	69
1962	McMahon v. Monarch Life Insurance	186 N.E.2d 827	69
1961	Novelty Bias Binding Co. v. Shevrin	175 N.E.2d 374	69

Showing the 15 most-cited of 253 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 Paul Grattan Kirk Sr. on?: Paul Grattan Kirk Sr. 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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10 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).