How do judges of the New Jersey Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New Jersey Supreme Court / Joined 1973 / Served to 1994

Robert L. Clifford

Justice, New Jersey Supreme Court

Robert L. Clifford was a Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1973. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1924 · age 102
Tenure: 1973–1994 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1973	New Jersey Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Duke University

Judicial Record

In our data, Clifford authored 190 published opinions for the court (1973–1994), plus 106 dissents and 44 concurrences. Most cited: Hopkins v. Fox & Lazo Realtors (484 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. 157 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
1993	Hopkins v. Fox & Lazo Realtors· Concurrence†	625 A.2d 1110	484
1979	Weedo v. Stone-E-Brick, Inc.	405 A.2d 788	429
1988	Clowes v. Terminix International, Inc.	538 A.2d 794	405
1994	Cox v. Sears Roebuck & Co.	647 A.2d 454	404
1988	State v. Koedatich· Dissent†	548 A.2d 939	379
1982	State v. Carter· Dissent†	449 A.2d 1280	366
1979	Suter v. San Angelo Foundry & MacHine Company· Concurrence†	406 A.2d 140	358
1992	In Re the Guardianship of J.C.· Concurrence†	608 A.2d 1312	341
1992	Voorhees v. Preferred Mutual Insurance· Dissent†	607 A.2d 1255	329
1988	State v. Bey· Dissent†	548 A.2d 887	292
1981	Jewish Center of Sussex Cty. v. Whale	432 A.2d 521	282
1981	State v. Alston	440 A.2d 1311	275
1992	Merin v. Maglaki· Dissent†	599 A.2d 1256	271
1981	Buckelew v. Grossbard	435 A.2d 1150	269
1992	Greenwood v. State Police Training Center· Dissent†	606 A.2d 336	262

Showing the 15 most-cited of 340 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 Jersey Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Robert L. Clifford on?: Robert L. Clifford was a Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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