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

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Vermont Supreme Court / Joined 1947 / Served to 1959

Walter H. Cleary

Justice, Vermont Supreme Court

Walter H. Cleary was a Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1947. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1887 · age 139
Tenure: 1947–1959 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1947	Vermont Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Middlebury College
Boston University

Judicial Record

In our data, Cleary authored 98 published opinions for the court (1938–1959), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: E. A. Strout Realty Agency, Inc. v. Wooster (32 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. 86 of these were attributed to Cleary 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
1953	E. A. Strout Realty Agency, Inc. v. Wooster†	99 A.2d 689	32
1952	State v. Levine†	91 A.2d 678	29
1956	Scott v. Leonard†	119 A.2d 691	27
1949	In Re Sage	66 A.2d 13	24
1957	Jackson v. Rogers†	134 A.2d 620	23
1952	Latchis v. John†	85 A.2d 575	21
1950	Rothfarb v. Camp Awanee, Inc.· Dissent†	71 A.2d 569	20
1951	Richardson v. Persons†	77 A.2d 842	19
1953	Lewis v. Holden†	99 A.2d 758	18
1958	Peterson v. Moulton†	144 A.2d 717	17
1958	Gulf Oil Corporation v. Morrison†	141 A.2d 671	17
1956	State v. Margie†	120 A.2d 807	17
1954	LaPlante v. Eastman†	105 A.2d 265	17
1952	Aiken v. Clark†	92 A.2d 620	17
1958	Benoit v. Marvin†	138 A.2d 312	16

Showing the 15 most-cited of 99 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 Walter H. Cleary on?: Walter H. Cleary 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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12 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).