How do judges of the New York Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New York Court of Appeals / Joined 2003 / Served to 2014

Robert Sherlock Smith

Judge, New York Court of Appeals

Robert Sherlock Smith was a Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 2003. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1944 · age 82
Tenure: 2003–2014 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2003	New York Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Stanford University
Columbia University in the City of New York

Judicial Record

In our data, Smith authored 160 published opinions for the court (2007–2014), plus 87 dissents and 43 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Gillotti (3,182 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. 268 of these were attributed to Smith 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
2014	People v. Gillotti· Concurrence†	23 N.Y.3d 841	3,182
2012	Vega v. Restani Construction Corp.· Dissent†	965 N.E.2d 240	1,791
2010	People v. Dreyden· Dissent†	15 N.Y.3d 100	1,662
2011	Perl v. Meher†	960 N.E.2d 424	831
2013	Applewhite v. Accuhealth, Inc.· Concurrence†	21 N.Y.3d 420	681
2013	People v. Morris· Dissent†	21 N.Y.3d 588	637
2010	Trupia v. Lake George Central School District· Concurrence†	927 N.E.2d 547	601
2012	Corsello v. Verizon New York, Inc.†	967 N.E.2d 1177	580
2009	McLean v. City of New York	12 N.Y.3d 194	510
2008	MATTER OF MARKOWITZ v. Serio· Concurrence†	11 N.Y.3d 43	482
2007	People v. Chiddick†	866 N.E.2d 1039	444
2013	People v. Rudolph†	21 N.Y.3d 497	406
2010	City of New York v. Maul· Dissent†	14 N.Y.3d 499	368
2013	People v. Tyrell· Dissent†	22 N.Y.3d 359	364
2011	People v. Becoats	958 N.E.2d 865	351

Showing the 15 most-cited of 290 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 York Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Robert Sherlock Smith on?: Robert Sherlock Smith was a Judge of the New York Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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