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

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Maine Supreme Judicial Court / Joined 1977 / Served to 1992

Vincent L. McKusick

Justice, Maine Supreme Judicial Court

Vincent L. McKusick was a Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1921 · age 105
Tenure: 1977–1992 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

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

Education

Bates College
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, McKusick authored 765 published opinions for the court (1977–1992), plus 8 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Barry (259 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. 561 of these were attributed to McKusick 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. Barry†	495 A.2d 825	259
1981	State v. True†	438 A.2d 460	231
1984	Taylor v. Commissioner of Mental Health & Mental Retardation†	481 A.2d 139	127
1982	Myrick v. James	444 A.2d 987	122
1983	Baybutt Construction Corp. v. Commercial Union Insurance	455 A.2d 914	118
1979	Vicnire v. Ford Motor Credit Co.†	401 A.2d 148	118
1982	Adams v. Buffalo Forge Co.· Dissent†	443 A.2d 932	109
1981	State v. Crocker†	435 A.2d 58	98
1982	Driscoll v. Gheewalla	441 A.2d 1023	91
1979	Maine Human Rights Commission v. City of Auburn†	408 A.2d 1253	90
1987	Darling v. Augusta Mental Health Institute†	535 A.2d 421	88
1986	In Re Randy Scott B.†	511 A.2d 450	88
1988	New England Whitewater Center, Inc. v. Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife	550 A.2d 56	81
1979	Letellier v. Small†	400 A.2d 371	81
1982	Beegan v. Schmidt†	451 A.2d 642	79

Showing the 15 most-cited of 779 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 Maine Supreme Judicial Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Vincent L. McKusick on?: Vincent L. McKusick was a Justice of the Maine 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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14 years on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).