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 1979 / Served to 1996

Robert Nathan Wilentz

Justice, New Jersey Supreme Court

Robert Nathan Wilentz was a Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1979. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1927–1996
Tenure: 1979–1996 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	New Jersey Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Harvard University
Columbia University in the City of New York

Judicial Record

In our data, Wilentz authored 47 published opinions for the court (1979–1996), plus 11 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Ramseur (731 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. 22 of these were attributed to Wilentz 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
1987	State v. Ramseur	524 A.2d 188	731
1995	Doe v. Poritz	662 A.2d 367	688
1984	State v. Kelly	478 A.2d 364	515
1979	In Re Wilson	409 A.2d 1153	416
1984	Kelly v. Gwinnell	476 A.2d 1219	307
1985	Woolley v. Hoffmann-La Roche, Inc.	491 A.2d 1257	287
1988	State v. Williams	550 A.2d 1172	285
1987	State v. Biegenwald†	524 A.2d 130	269
1983	Southern Burlington County N.A.A.C.P. v. Township of Mount Laurel†	456 A.2d 390	264
1988	State v. Rose· Concurrence†	548 A.2d 1058	222
1988	Matter of Baby M.†	537 A.2d 1227	191
1980	State v. Maguire	423 A.2d 294	183
1983	State v. Des Marets	455 A.2d 1074	179
1980	State v. Powell	419 A.2d 406	168
1996	State v. Muhammad· Concurrence†	678 A.2d 164	163

Showing the 15 most-cited of 65 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 Nathan Wilentz on?: Robert Nathan Wilentz 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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17 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).