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 2013 / Active

Shirley M. Watts

Justice, Supreme Court of Maryland

Shirley M. Watts is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland, serving since 2013. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1959 · age 67
Tenure: Since 2013 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2013	Supreme Court of Maryland	–	–

Education

Howard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Watts authored 170 published opinions for the court (2013–2026), plus 20 dissents and 23 concurrences. Most cited: Cooper v. Rodriguez (114 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. 57 of these were attributed to Watts 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
2015	Cooper v. Rodriguez	443 Md. 680	114
2017	Robinson, Williams & Spriggs v. State	152 A.3d 661	67
2017	Bellard v. State	157 A.3d 272	58
2015	Attorney Grievance Commission v. Shuler	443 Md. 494	51
2015	Thompson v. UBS Financial Services, Inc.	443 Md. 47	49
2017	Scott v. State	164 A.3d 177	47
2014	Nalls & Melvin v. State· Concurrence†	437 Md. 674	44
2017	Bank of New York Mellon v. Georg	175 A.3d 720	43
2016	Rowhouses, Inc. v. Smith	446 Md. 611	39
2014	Pearson v. State	437 Md. 350	39
2016	Attorney Grievance Commission v. Allenbaugh†	148 A.3d 300	36
2015	Hailes v. State	442 Md. 488	35
2017	Lillian C. Blentlinger, LLC v. Cleanwater Linganore, Inc.	173 A.3d 549	34
2020	Kazadi v. State	223 A.3d 554	33
2013	Attorney Grievance Commission v. Davy†	435 Md. 674	32

Showing the 15 most-cited of 213 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 is Shirley M. Watts on?: Shirley M. Watts is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland.

Sources

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

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13 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).