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 2009 / Active

Ralph D. Gants

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Ralph D. Gants is a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, serving since 2009. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1954 · age 72
Tenure: Since 2009 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2009	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Harvard University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Gants authored 233 published opinions for the court (2009–2019), plus 11 dissents and 24 concurrences. Most cited: Ferri v. Powell-Ferri (336 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. 243 of these were attributed to Gants 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
2017	Ferri v. Powell-Ferri· Concurrence†	476 Mass. 651	336
2011	Adoption of Ilona†	459 Mass. 53	237
2014	Commonwealth v. Crayton†	470 Mass. 228	226
2011	US Bank National Association v. Ibanez	458 Mass. 637	222
2009	Commonwealth v. Zanetti†	454 Mass. 449	170
2011	Curtis v. Herb Chambers I-95, Inc.†	458 Mass. 674	169
2009	Commonwealth v. Silva-Santiago†	453 Mass. 782	137
2012	O'BRIEN v. Borowski	461 Mass. 415	102
2009	Birchall†	454 Mass. 837	100
2010	Commonwealth v. Porro	458 Mass. 526	97
2010	Commonwealth v. Barbosa	457 Mass. 773	96
2013	Commonwealth v. Canty†	466 Mass. 535	95
2010	Commonwealth v. McCowen	458 Mass. 461	95
2011	Commonwealth v. Purdy	459 Mass. 442	93
2009	Commonwealth v. Connolly· Concurrence†	454 Mass. 808	92

Showing the 15 most-cited of 268 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 is Ralph D. Gants on?: Ralph D. Gants is a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Sources

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

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17 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).