How do judges of the Supreme Court of Maryland reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Supreme Court of Maryland / Joined 1942 / Served to 1945

Ridgely P. Melvin

Justice, Supreme Court of Maryland

Ridgely P. Melvin was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland, who joined the court in 1942. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1881–1945
Tenure: 1942–1945 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1942	Supreme Court of Maryland	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Melvin authored 40 published opinions for the court (1943–1945). Most cited: Dietrich v. Anderson (59 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.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1945	Dietrich v. Anderson	43 A.2d 186	59
1943	Baltimore Bedding Corp. v. Moses	34 A.2d 338	58
1944	Allen v. State	39 A.2d 820	47
1943	Bass v. State	35 A.2d 155	47
1945	North Point Construction Co. v. Sagner	44 A.2d 441	40
1944	Wells v. Price	37 A.2d 888	40
1944	Saltzgaver v. Saltzgaver	35 A.2d 810	40
1944	Yaniger v. Calvert Bldg. & Construction Co.	37 A.2d 263	36
1945	Baltimore Transit Co. v. State Ex Rel. Schriefer	40 A.2d 678	33
1943	Pearson v. State	31 A.2d 624	32
1944	Croyle v. Croyle	40 A.2d 374	31
1943	Wright v. Wagner	34 A.2d 441	30
1944	Hart v. Wagner	40 A.2d 47	24
1943	Louis Sachs & Sons v. Ward	35 A.2d 161	23
1943	Dunnigan v. Dunnigan	31 A.2d 634	22

Showing the 15 most-cited of 40 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 Supreme Court of Maryland reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Ridgely P. Melvin on?: Ridgely P. Melvin was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland.

Sources

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

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