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 1870 / Served to 1878

William F. Allen

Judge, New York Court of Appeals

William F. Allen was a Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1870. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1808–1878
Tenure: 1870–1878 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1870	New York Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Allen authored 568 published opinions for the court (1854–1878), plus 18 dissents and 23 concurrences. Most cited: People Ex Rel. Tweed v. . Liscomb (271 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. 154 of these were attributed to Allen 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
1875	People Ex Rel. Tweed v. . Liscomb	60 N.Y. 559	271
1871	Barrett v. . the Third Avenue R.R. Co.	45 N.Y. 628	215
1875	Whitney Arms Co. v. . Barlow	63 N.Y. 62	203
1872	Smith v. . the People	47 N.Y. 330	201
1877	Vrooman v. . Turner	69 N.Y. 280	199
1854	McCluskey v. . Cromwell	11 N.Y. 593	184
1871	Chamberlain v. . Chamberlain	43 N.Y. 424	177
1878	Mott v. . Consumers' Ice Company	73 N.Y. 543	172
1872	Austin v. . Munro	47 N.Y. 360	149
1877	Trustees of Columbia College v. Lynch	70 N.Y. 440	145
1874	Kamp v. . Kamp	59 N.Y. 212	144
1875	Devlin v. Mayor of New York	63 N.Y. 8	140
1874	Tilton v. . Beecher· Dissent	59 N.Y. 176	140
1871	Ruloff v. . the People	45 N.Y. 213	129
1873	People Ex Rel. Bolton v. . Albertson	55 N.Y. 50	124

Showing the 15 most-cited of 610 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 William F. Allen on?: William F. Allen 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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8 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).