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

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Connecticut Supreme Court / Joined 2001 / Former Justice

Peter T. Zarella

Justice, Connecticut Supreme Court

Peter T. Zarella was a Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2001. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1949 · age 77
Tenure: 2001 · 25 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2001	Connecticut Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Northwestern University
Suffolk University

Judicial Record

In our data, Zarella authored 169 published opinions for the court (2001–2016), plus 17 dissents and 41 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Salamon (243 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. 170 of these were attributed to Zarella 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
2008	State v. Salamon· Concurrence†	949 A.2d 1092	243
2011	State v. Kitchens†	10 A.3d 942	242
2004	State v. Colon†	272 Conn. 106	228
2008	State v. DeJesus· Concurrence†	953 A.2d 45	196
2002	Perodeau v. City of Hartford†	259 Conn. 729	184
2007	State v. Fauci	917 A.2d 978	161
2003	State v. Rizzo· Concurrence†	266 Conn. 171	127
2003	State v. Ceballos· Concurrence†	266 Conn. 364	125
2008	Johnson v. Commissioner of Correction	941 A.2d 248	118
2008	Kerrigan v. Commissioner of Public Health· Dissent†	957 A.2d 407	111
2010	Naples v. Keystone Building & Development Corp.· Concurrence†	990 A.2d 326	96
2002	Suffield Development Associates Ltd. Partnership v. National Loan Investors, L.P.†	260 Conn. 766	96
2006	State v. Sawyer†	279 Conn. 331	94
2002	Vacco v. Microsoft Corp.†	260 Conn. 59	93
2001	Bender v. Bender· Dissent†	258 Conn. 733	93

Showing the 15 most-cited of 227 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 Connecticut Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Peter T. Zarella on?: Peter T. Zarella was a Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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