How do judges of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Maine Supreme Judicial Court / Joined 1986 / Active

Robert W. Clifford

Justice, Maine Supreme Judicial Court

Robert W. Clifford is a Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, serving since 1986. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1937 · age 89
Tenure: Since 1986 · 40 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1986	Maine Supreme Judicial Court	–	–
2009	Maine Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Bowdoin College
Boston College

Judicial Record

In our data, Clifford authored 721 published opinions for the court (1986–2015), plus 55 dissents and 17 concurrences. Most cited: Curtis v. Porter (461 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. 698 of these were attributed to Clifford 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
2001	Curtis v. Porter· Dissent†	2001 ME 158	461
2004	Moody v. State Liquor & Lottery Commission	2004 ME 20	264
2006	Saunders v. Tisher†	2006 ME 94	198
2000	In Re Wage Payment Litigation	2000 ME 162	162
1999	Corey v. Norman, Hanson & DeTroy†	1999 ME 196	145
1991	Imagineering, Inc. v. Superintendent of Insurance†	593 A.2d 1050	121
1998	Paffhausen v. Balano†	1998 ME 47	119
1995	Oceanside at Pine Point Condominium Owners Ass'n v. Peachtree Doors, Inc.†	659 A.2d 267	88
2006	Advanced Construction Corp. v. Pilecki	2006 ME 84	82
2005	State v. Weinschenk	2005 ME 28	81
2000	Holland v. Sebunya†	2000 ME 160	73
2004	C.E.W. v. D.E.W.· Concurrence†	845 A.2d 1146	72
1995	Murphy v. Keenan†	667 A.2d 591	62
2000	Acadia Insurance Co. v. Buck Construction Co.	2000 ME 154	61
1990	Department of Human Services v. Lowatchie†	569 A.2d 197	61

Showing the 15 most-cited of 793 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 Maine Supreme Judicial Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court is Robert W. Clifford on?: Robert W. Clifford is a Justice of the Maine 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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40 years on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).