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 1954 / Served to 1969

Walter M. Tapley Jr.

Justice, Maine Supreme Judicial Court

Walter M. Tapley Jr. was a Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, who joined the court in 1954. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1898–1971
Tenure: 1954–1969 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1954	Maine Supreme Judicial Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Tapley authored 104 published opinions for the court (1954–1969), plus 3 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Cyr v. Giesen (54 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. 106 of these were attributed to Tapley 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
1954	Cyr v. Giesen†	108 A.2d 316	54
1963	State v. Charette†	188 A.2d 898	53
1969	State v. Ferris†	249 A.2d 523	32
1963	Strater v. Strater†	196 A.2d 94	32
1961	Kovack v. Licensing Board, City of Waterville	173 A.2d 554	25
1959	Squires v. Inhabitants of City of Augusta†	153 A.2d 80	23
1955	State v. Ernst†	114 A.2d 369	23
1965	State v. Merrow†	208 A.2d 659	20
1959	State v. Mottram†	156 A.2d 383	20
1963	Ventresco v. Bushey· Dissent†	191 A.2d 104	18
1963	Whiting v. Seavey†	188 A.2d 276	18
1967	Corbett v. Curtis†	225 A.2d 402	17
1957	Bilodeau v. Maine Employment Security Commission†	136 A.2d 522	16
1962	Nelson v. Leo's Auto Sales, Inc.†	185 A.2d 121	15
1955	State v. Norton†	116 A.2d 635	15

Showing the 15 most-cited of 109 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 Walter M. Tapley Jr. on?: Walter M. Tapley Jr. 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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15 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).