How do judges of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court / Joined 1977 / Served to 2000

Ruth Abrams

Justice, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Ruth Abrams was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1930 · age 96
Tenure: 1977–2000 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Education

Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Abrams authored 766 published opinions for the court (1977–2000), plus 23 dissents and 42 concurrences. Most cited: Flesner v. Technical Communications Corp. (1,310 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. 330 of these were attributed to Abrams 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
1991	Flesner v. Technical Communications Corp.	575 N.E.2d 1107	1,310
1991	Anthony's Pier Four, Inc. v. HBC ASSOCIATES	583 N.E.2d 806	681
1977	Fortune v. National Cash Register Co.	364 N.E.2d 1251	507
1980	Packaging Industries Group, Inc. v. Cheney	405 N.E.2d 106	501
1979	Linthicum v. Archambault	398 N.E.2d 482	349
1982	Attorney General v. Bailey	436 N.E.2d 139	335
1982	Commonwealth v. Tavares	430 N.E.2d 1198	315
1995	Blare v. Husky Injection Molding Systems Boston, Inc.†	419 Mass. 437	309
1982	Commonwealth v. McCarthy	430 N.E.2d 1195	275
1986	Commonwealth v. Helfant	496 N.E.2d 433	274
1987	Foley v. Polaroid Corp.· Concurrence†	508 N.E.2d 72	265
2000	Schaer v. Brandeis University†	432 Mass. 474	255
1982	Cody v. Connecticut General Life Insurance†	387 Mass. 142	249
1982	Klein v. Catalano	437 N.E.2d 514	233
1983	Nei v. Burley· Dissent†	446 N.E.2d 674	213

Showing the 15 most-cited of 831 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 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Ruth Abrams on?: Ruth Abrams was a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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