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 1973 / Served to 1992

Solomon Wachtler

Judge, New York Court of Appeals

Solomon Wachtler was a Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1973. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1930 · age 96
Tenure: 1973–1992 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1973	New York Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Washington and Lee University
Washington and Lee University

Judicial Record

In our data, Wachtler authored 373 published opinions for the court (1973–1992), plus 91 dissents and 32 concurrences. Most cited: People v. De Bour (2,736 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. 468 of these were attributed to Wachtler 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
1976	People v. De Bour†	40 N.Y.2d 210	2,736
1980	Hearst Corp. v. Clyne†	50 N.Y.2d 707	1,757
1976	People v. Ashwal†	39 N.Y.2d 105	1,334
1975	People v. Taranovich· Dissent†	37 N.Y.2d 442	1,248
1975	People v. Cantor†	36 N.Y.2d 106	1,236
1975	Broughton v. State†	37 N.Y.2d 451	1,141
1976	Rovello v. Orofino Realty Co.· Dissent†	40 N.Y.2d 633	1,067
1981	Russin v. Louis N. Picciano & Son†	54 N.Y.2d 311	807
1987	Berenhaus v. Ward†	70 N.Y.2d 436	792
1992	People v. Hollman†	79 N.Y.2d 181	726
1982	People v. Parker†	57 N.Y.2d 136	657
1979	People v. Allweiss†	48 N.Y.2d 40	654
1985	Zimmer v. Chemung County Performing Arts, Inc.· Dissent†	65 N.Y.2d 513	634
1978	Breed v. Insurance Co. of North America· Dissent†	46 N.Y.2d 351	632
1974	Andre v. Pomeroy†	35 N.Y.2d 361	631

Showing the 15 most-cited of 496 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 Solomon Wachtler on?: Solomon Wachtler 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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19 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).