How do judges of the New Jersey Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New Jersey Supreme Court / Joined 1973 / Served to 1979

Richard Joseph Hughes

Justice, New Jersey Supreme Court

Richard Joseph Hughes was a Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1973. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1909–1992
Tenure: 1973–1979 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1973	New Jersey Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Saint Josephs College
Rutgers University-Camden

Judicial Record

In our data, Hughes authored 29 published opinions for the court (1974–1979), plus 9 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: Rova Farms Resort, Inc. v. Investors Insurance Co. of America (2,261 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. 16 of these were attributed to Hughes 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
1974	Rova Farms Resort, Inc. v. Investors Insurance Co. of America	323 A.2d 495	2,261
1976	In Re Quinlan	355 A.2d 647	379
1975	Avant v. Clifford	341 A.2d 629	276
1977	Baxter v. Fairmont Food Co.	379 A.2d 225	258
1976	State v. Deatore	358 A.2d 163	175
1977	Leimgruber v. Claridge Associates, Ltd.	375 A.2d 652	161
1979	State v. Whitaker	401 A.2d 509	127
1979	In Re Kozlov	398 A.2d 882	127
1977	Vreeland v. Byrne· Dissent†	370 A.2d 825	118
1979	Carrino v. Novotny	396 A.2d 561	115
1977	In Re the Suspension or Revocation of the Certificate of Heller	374 A.2d 1191	109
1979	State v. Lashinsky· Concurrence†	404 A.2d 1121	105
1978	Nicoletta v. North Jersey District Water Supply Commission	390 A.2d 90	100
1976	Pascucci v. Vagott	362 A.2d 566	100
1976	Robinson v. Cahill· Concurrence†	355 A.2d 129	85

Showing the 15 most-cited of 43 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 Jersey Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Richard Joseph Hughes on?: Richard Joseph Hughes was a Justice of the New Jersey 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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6 years on the New Jersey Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).