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 2012 / Former Justice

Robert N. McDonald

Justice, Supreme Court of Maryland

Robert N. McDonald was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland, who joined the court in 2012. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1952 · age 74
Tenure: 2012 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2012	Supreme Court of Maryland	–	–

Education

Harvard University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, McDonald authored 157 published opinions for the court (2012–2022), plus 26 dissents and 32 concurrences. Most cited: Doe v. Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services (77 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. 96 of these were attributed to McDonald 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
2013	Doe v. Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services· Concurrence†	430 Md. 535	77
2014	Attorney Grievance Commission v. Thomas· Concurrence†	440 Md. 523	58
2021	Nationstar Mortgage v. Kemp	476 Md. 149	53
2013	Blue v. Prince George's County†	434 Md. 681	52
2013	Derr v. State· Concurrence†	434 Md. 88	52
2015	Thompson v. UBS Financial Services, Inc.· Concurrence†	443 Md. 47	49
2012	Bazzle v. State· Dissent†	426 Md. 541	48
2013	Mathews v. Cassidy Turley Maryland, Inc.†	435 Md. 584	47
2015	Oglesby v. State	441 Md. 673	45
2014	Nalls & Melvin v. State· Concurrence†	437 Md. 674	44
2018	Carter, Bowie, McCullough v. State	192 A.3d 695	43
2016	State v. Roshchin	446 Md. 128	43
2014	Falls Road Community Ass'n v. Baltimore County	437 Md. 115	40
2014	Pearson v. State· Dissent†	437 Md. 350	39
2014	State v. Payne & Bond· Concurrence†	440 Md. 680	37

Showing the 15 most-cited of 215 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 N. McDonald on?: Robert N. McDonald was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland.

Sources

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

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14 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).