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 1971 / Served to 1981

Robert Braucher

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Robert Braucher was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1971. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1916–1981
Tenure: 1971–1981 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1971	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Haverford College
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Braucher authored 357 published opinions for the court (1971–1981), plus 21 dissents and 9 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Soares (576 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. 107 of these were attributed to Braucher 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
1979	Commonwealth v. Soares· Concurrence†	387 N.E.2d 499	576
1974	Hendrickson v. Sears	310 N.E.2d 131	260
1978	Poirier v. Town of Plymouth· Concurrence†	372 N.E.2d 212	237
1977	Commonwealth v. Haas· Concurrence†	369 N.E.2d 692	209
1973	Robert Industries, Inc. v. Spence	291 N.E.2d 407	194
1978	Loranger Construction Corp. v. E. F. Hauserman Co.	384 N.E.2d 176	149
1976	Druker v. Roland Wm. Jutras Associates, Inc.	348 N.E.2d 763	149
1977	Commonwealth v. Dickerson· Concurrence†	364 N.E.2d 1052	148
1981	Commonwealth v. Joyce· Concurrence†	415 N.E.2d 181	136
1975	Commonwealth v. Graziano	331 N.E.2d 808	133
1975	Baldassari v. Public Finance Trust	337 N.E.2d 701	123
1978	Commonwealth v. Vitello· Dissent†	381 N.E.2d 582	122
1980	Commonwealth v. Bacon· Dissent†	411 N.E.2d 772	106
1980	In the Matter of Spring	405 N.E.2d 115	100
1976	Trustees of the Stigmatine Fathers, Inc. v. Secretary of Administration & Finance†	369 Mass. 562	97

Showing the 15 most-cited of 387 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 Robert Braucher on?: Robert Braucher 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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10 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).