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 1960 / Served to 1963

Sydney Francis Foster

Judge, New York Court of Appeals

Sydney Francis Foster was a Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1960. He previously served on the New York Appellate Division. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1893–1973
Tenure: 1960–1963 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1939	New York Appellate Division	–	–
1960	New York Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Foster authored 317 published opinions for the court (1870–1963), plus 53 dissents and 10 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Donovan (147 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. 362 of these were attributed to Foster 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
1963	People v. Donovan· Dissent†	13 N.Y.2d 148	147
1962	Sincoff v. Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance†	11 N.Y.2d 386	109
1963	November v. Time Inc.· Dissent†	13 N.Y.2d 175	96
1963	Walcutt v. Clevite Corp.· Dissent†	13 N.Y.2d 48	90
1961	In re the Estate of Szabo†	10 N.Y.2d 94	79
1962	McLaughlin v. Mine Safety Appliances Co.†	11 N.Y.2d 62	66
1960	Sperling v. Great American Indemnity Co.· Dissent†	7 N.Y.2d 442	66
1962	Marco v. Sachs†	10 N.Y.2d 542	65
1960	Ripley v. International Railways of Central America· Dissent†	8 N.Y.2d 430	64
1960	Bright Homes, Inc. v. Wright†	8 N.Y.2d 157	56
1962	Nash v. Kornblum†	12 N.Y.2d 42	49
1952	Holmes v. State†	279 A.D. 489	47
1952	Campo Corp. v. Feinberg†	279 A.D. 302	45
1870	Worth v. . Case	42 N.Y. 362	39
1870	Herrick v. . Woolverton	41 N.Y. 581	39

Showing the 15 most-cited of 380 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 Sydney Francis Foster on?: Sydney Francis Foster 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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3 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).