How do judges of the New York Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New York Court of Appeals / Joined 1997 / Served to 2003

Richard C. Wesley

Judge, New York Court of Appeals

Richard C. Wesley was a Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1997. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1949 · age 77
Tenure: 1997–2003 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1997	New York Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Cornell University

Judicial Record

In our data, Wesley authored 91 published opinions for the court (1997–2003), plus 5 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Hidalgo (1,549 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. 99 of these were attributed to Wesley 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
1998	People v. Hidalgo†	698 N.E.2d 46	1,549
2001	Leader v. Maroney, Ponzini & Spencer†	761 N.E.2d 1018	1,128
2001	Hamilton v. Beretta U.S.A. Corp.†	750 N.E.2d 1055	678
2001	Kelly v. Safir†	747 N.E.2d 1280	635
2000	People v. Carroll†	740 N.E.2d 1084	274
1999	Express Industries & Terminal Corp. v. New York State Department of Transportation†	93 N.Y.2d 584	259
1998	Bast v. Rossoff†	697 N.E.2d 1009	257
1997	Presbyterian Hospital v. Maryland Casualty Co.· Dissent†	683 N.E.2d 1	215
1998	People v. Bello†	705 N.E.2d 1209	202
1997	People v. Ortiz†	686 N.E.2d 1337	190
1997	Central General Hospital v. Chubb Group of Insurance Companies· Concurrence†	681 N.E.2d 413	189
2001	People v. Prescott†	745 N.E.2d 1000	184
1999	New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Ass'n v. State†	726 N.E.2d 462	181
2002	People v. Arroyo†	772 N.E.2d 1154	180
2001	Tall Trees Construction Corp. v. Zoning Board of Appeals†	97 N.Y.2d 86	180

Showing the 15 most-cited of 99 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 New York Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Richard C. Wesley on?: Richard C. Wesley was a Judge of the New York Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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