How do judges of the Vermont Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Vermont Supreme Court / Joined 1985 / Served to 1987

Thomas L. Hayes

Justice, Vermont Supreme Court

Thomas L. Hayes was a Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1985. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1926–1987
Tenure: 1985–1987 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1985	Vermont Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Vermont
Georgetown University

Judicial Record

In our data, Hayes authored 29 published opinions for the court (1985–2007), plus 1 dissent and 2 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Jewett (142 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. 30 of these were attributed to Hayes 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
1985	State v. Jewett†	500 A.2d 233	142
1986	Bruntaeger v. Zeller†	515 A.2d 123	61
1986	State v. Begins†	514 A.2d 719	40
1986	State v. Jarvis†	509 A.2d 1005	39
1985	In Re McDonald's Corp.†	505 A.2d 1202	35
1986	In Re Pernicka†	513 A.2d 616	33
1986	State v. Norton†	514 A.2d 1053	27
1986	State v. Dreibelbis†	511 A.2d 307	23
1986	Demag v. American Insurance Companies†	508 A.2d 697	22
1986	Molesworth v. University of Vermont†	508 A.2d 722	21
2007	Golden v. Cooper-Ellis	2007 VT 15	20
1985	Parker, Lamb & Ankuda, P.C. v. Krupinsky†	503 A.2d 531	19
1986	Weisburgh v. Mahady†	511 A.2d 304	17
1986	Murray v. J & B International Trucks, Inc.†	508 A.2d 1351	17
1986	Russo v. Griffin· Concurrence†	510 A.2d 436	16

Showing the 15 most-cited of 32 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 Vermont Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Thomas L. Hayes on?: Thomas L. Hayes was a Justice of the Vermont 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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2 years on the Vermont Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).