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 1991 / Served to 2013

Robert M. Bell

Justice, Supreme Court of Maryland

Robert M. Bell was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland (7 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1991. He previously served on the Appellate Court of Maryland. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1943 · age 83
Tenure: 1991–2013 · 22 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1984	Appellate Court of Maryland	–	–
1991	Supreme Court of Maryland	–	–

Education

Morgan State University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Bell authored 871 published opinions for the court (1984–2014), plus 169 dissents and 32 concurrences. Most cited: Owens-Illinois, Inc. v. Zenobia (337 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. 771 of these were attributed to Bell 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
1992	Owens-Illinois, Inc. v. Zenobia· Concurrence†	601 A.2d 633	337
2007	Lloyd v. General Motors Corp.†	916 A.2d 257	313
2001	Taylor v. NationsBank, N.A.†	776 A.2d 645	309
1993	Gross v. Sussex Inc.†	630 A.2d 1156	171
2000	Frederick Road Ltd. Partnership v. Sturm†	756 A.2d 963	165
2005	Walther v. Sovereign Bank· Dissent†	872 A.2d 735	159
2004	Lee v. Cline	863 A.2d 297	159
2007	Longshore v. State	924 A.2d 1129	157
1994	Hecht v. Resolution Trust Corp.· Dissent†	635 A.2d 394	149
1994	Hartford Insurance v. Manor Inn of Bethesda, Inc.†	642 A.2d 219	148
2003	State v. Smith· Dissent†	823 A.2d 664	144
2002	Walter v. Gunter· Concurrence†	788 A.2d 609	143
2000	Mayor of Baltimore v. Chase†	756 A.2d 987	142
1995	Montgomery Ward v. Wilson· Dissent†	339 Md. 701	141
1992	Oken v. State· Concurrence†	612 A.2d 258	141

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,072 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 Robert M. Bell on?: Robert M. Bell was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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22 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).