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 1983 / Served to 1997

Richard Duncan Simons

Judge, New York Court of Appeals

Richard Duncan Simons was a Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1983. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1927 · age 99
Tenure: 1983–1997 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	New York Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Judicial Record

In our data, Simons authored 275 published opinions for the court (1983–1996), plus 57 dissents and 14 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Seaberg (1,777 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. 337 of these were attributed to Simons 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
1989	People v. Seaberg†	74 N.Y.2d 1	1,777
1986	Turcotte v. Fell†	68 N.Y.2d 432	1,307
1988	Holtzman v. Goldman†	71 N.Y.2d 564	1,255
1987	In re Nicole V.†	71 N.Y.2d 112	1,119
1984	In Re the Guardianship of Star Leslie W.†	63 N.Y.2d 136	1,072
1995	People v. Ford†	657 N.E.2d 265	1,066
1987	People v. Alvino†	71 N.Y.2d 233	1,030
1985	People v. Bigelow†	66 N.Y.2d 417	833
1992	People v. Antommarchi†	80 N.Y.2d 247	745
1989	Hooper Associates Ltd. v. AGS Computers, Inc.†	74 N.Y.2d 487	699
1995	New York University v. Continental Insurance†	87 N.Y.2d 308	663
1994	People v. Bora†	634 N.E.2d 168	642
1985	Zimmer v. Chemung County Performing Arts, Inc.· Concurrence†	65 N.Y.2d 513	634
1992	People v. Martinez†	80 N.Y.2d 444	622
1984	People v. Pelchat†	62 N.Y.2d 97	606

Showing the 15 most-cited of 346 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 Duncan Simons on?: Richard Duncan Simons was a Judge of the New York Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

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14 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).