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 1976 / Served to 1996

Paul J. Liacos

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Paul J. Liacos was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1976. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1929–1999
Tenure: 1976–1996 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1976	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Boston University
Boston University

Judicial Record

In our data, Liacos authored 666 published opinions for the court (1976–1996), plus 67 dissents and 60 concurrences. Most cited: Cassesso v. Commissioner of Correction (1,722 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. 272 of these were attributed to Liacos 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
1983	Cassesso v. Commissioner of Correction	456 N.E.2d 1123	1,722
1979	Commonwealth v. Soares	387 N.E.2d 499	576
1983	Mullins v. Pine Manor College	449 N.E.2d 331	371
1977	Superintendent of Belchertown State School v. Saikewicz	370 N.E.2d 417	327
1983	International Fidelity Insurance v. Wilson	443 N.E.2d 1308	322
1979	Good Hope Industries, Inc. v. Ryder Scott Co.	389 N.E.2d 76	315
1980	Commonwealth v. Bowden	399 N.E.2d 482	300
1987	Foley v. Polaroid Corp.· Concurrence†	508 N.E.2d 72	265
1980	Ferriter v. Daniel O'Connell's Sons, Inc.	413 N.E.2d 690	249
1978	Poirier v. Town of Plymouth	372 N.E.2d 212	237
1984	Bratt v. International Business MacHines Corp.	467 N.E.2d 126	228
1976	Commonwealth v. Walker· Concurrence†	350 N.E.2d 678	198
1994	King v. Driscoll	638 N.E.2d 488	196
1981	New Boston Garden Corp. v. Board of Assessors†	383 Mass. 456	193
1983	Commonwealth v. Mahdi	448 N.E.2d 357	192

Showing the 15 most-cited of 793 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 J. Liacos on?: Paul J. Liacos 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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20 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).