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 2001 / Active

Robert J. Cordy

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Robert J. Cordy is a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, serving since 2001. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1949 · age 77
Tenure: Since 2001 · 25 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2001	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Dartmouth College
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Cordy authored 378 published opinions for the court (2001–2016), plus 33 dissents and 28 concurrences. Most cited: US Bank National Association v. Ibanez (222 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. 423 of these were attributed to Cordy 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
2011	US Bank National Association v. Ibanez· Concurrence†	458 Mass. 637	222
2006	Jupin v. Kask†	447 Mass. 141	195
2003	Goodridge v. Department of Public Health· Dissent†	440 Mass. 309	186
2004	Aspinall v. Philip Morris Companies, Inc.· Dissent†	442 Mass. 381	182
2007	Blackstone v. Cashman†	448 Mass. 255	169
2006	Commonwealth v. Zinser†	446 Mass. 807	165
2002	Commonwealth v. Jimenez†	438 Mass. 213	163
2007	Miller v. Cotter†	448 Mass. 671	141
2002	Fabre v. Walton†	436 Mass. 517	128
2010	Commonwealth v. Vasquez· Concurrence†	456 Mass. 350	127
2002	Kent v. Commonwealth†	437 Mass. 312	117
2011	Commonwealth v. Clarke†	460 Mass. 30	115
2002	Sharon v. City of Newton†	437 Mass. 99	108
2007	Chokel v. Genzyme Corp.†	449 Mass. 272	106
2007	Masingill v. EMC Corp.†	449 Mass. 532	104

Showing the 15 most-cited of 439 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 is Robert J. Cordy on?: Robert J. Cordy is 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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25 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).