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

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Supreme Court of Maryland / Joined 1965 / Served to 1974

William J. McWilliams

Justice, Supreme Court of Maryland

William J. McWilliams was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland, who joined the court in 1965. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1904–1998
Tenure: 1965–1974 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1965	Supreme Court of Maryland	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, McWilliams authored 258 published opinions for the court (1965–1974), plus 5 dissents. Most cited: In Re Formal Inquiry Concerning Judge Diener (90 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. 258 of these were attributed to McWilliams 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
1973	In Re Formal Inquiry Concerning Judge Diener	304 A.2d 587	90
1971	Robinson v. Board of County Commissioners†	278 A.2d 71	90
1973	Turner v. Hammond†	310 A.2d 543	65
1970	Isen v. Phoenix Assurance Co.†	270 A.2d 476	63
1968	Telak v. Maszczenski†	237 A.2d 434	48
1971	Consolidated Mechanical Contractors, Inc. v. Ball†	283 A.2d 154	46
1968	Robinson v. State†	238 A.2d 875	43
1966	Harmon v. State Roads Commission· Dissent†	217 A.2d 513	42
1971	Kasten Construction Co. v. Evans†	273 A.2d 90	39
1969	Wells v. Pierpont†	253 A.2d 749	38
1968	Mettee v. Boone†	247 A.2d 390	36
1968	Atlantic States Construction Co. v. Drummond & Co.†	246 A.2d 251	36
1965	Houston v. LLOYD'S CONSUMER ACCEPTANCE CORPORATION†	215 A.2d 192	35
1971	Orrison v. Vance†	277 A.2d 573	34
1970	Canada's Tavern, Inc. v. Town of Glen Echo†	271 A.2d 664	34

Showing the 15 most-cited of 263 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 Supreme Court of Maryland reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was William J. McWilliams on?: William J. McWilliams was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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9 years on the Supreme Court of Maryland. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).