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 1956 / Served to 1972

Richard Amni Cutter

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Richard Amni Cutter was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1956. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1902–1993
Tenure: 1956–1972 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1956	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Harvard University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Cutter authored 633 published opinions for the court (1956–1972), plus 8 dissents and 14 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Freeman (628 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. 138 of these were attributed to Cutter 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
1967	Commonwealth v. Freeman	227 N.E.2d 3	628
1968	My Bread Baking Co. v. Cumberland Farms, Inc.	233 N.E.2d 748	301
1959	O'Brien v. State Tax Commission†	339 Mass. 56	190
1970	Commonwealth v. French	259 N.E.2d 195	125
1965	VAPPI & CO. INC. v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co.	204 N.E.2d 273	118
1969	Kannavos v. Annino	247 N.E.2d 708	115
1964	Cleary v. Cardullo's, Inc.	198 N.E.2d 281	104
1968	Commonwealth v. Bumpus	238 N.E.2d 343	97
1956	Newton Girl Scout Council, Inc. v. Massachusetts Turnpike Authority	138 N.E.2d 769	93
1968	Home Owners Federal Savings & Loan Ass'n v. Northwestern Fire & Marine Insurance· Dissent†	238 N.E.2d 55	90
1959	Samia v. Central Oil Co. of Worcester	158 N.E.2d 469	83
1964	Air Technology Corp. v. General Electric Co.	199 N.E.2d 538	77
1957	Simons v. American Dry Ginger Ale Co. Inc.	140 N.E.2d 649	74
1971	Commonwealth v. Thomas	267 N.E.2d 489	70
1969	Insurance Rating Board v. Commissioner of Insurance· Concurrence†	248 N.E.2d 500	69

Showing the 15 most-cited of 655 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 Richard Amni Cutter on?: Richard Amni Cutter 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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16 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).