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 1883 / Served to 1892

William C. Ruger

Judge, New York Court of Appeals

William C. Ruger was a Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1883. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1883–1892 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1883	New York Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Ruger authored 351 published opinions for the court (1883–1891), plus 5 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: People v. . O'Brien (258 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. 47 of these were attributed to Ruger 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
1888	People v. . O'Brien	18 N.E. 692	258
1890	City of Rochester v. . Campbell	25 N.E. 937	195
1890	Canajoharie National Bank v. Diefendorf	25 N.E. 402	178
1884	Baird v. . Mayor, Etc., of City of N.Y.	96 N.Y. 567	158
1887	Lahr v. Metropolitan Elevated Railway Co.	10 N.E. 528	138
1886	Dwight v. . Germania Life Ins. Co.	8 N.E. 654	136
1885	Pantzar v. . Tilly Foster Iron Mining Co.	2 N.E. 24	128
1883	People Ex Rel. Westchester Fire Insurance v. Davenport	91 N.Y. 574	118
1891	Galway v. Metropolitan Elevated Railway Co.	28 N.E. 479	116
1889	Fowler v. . Bowery Savings Bank· Dissent	21 N.E. 172	115
1886	Reining v. . City of Buffalo, Etc.	6 N.E. 792	113
1886	Seifert v. . City of Brooklyn	4 N.E. 321	112
1883	Smith v. . City of Rochester	92 N.Y. 463	112
1883	Wetmore v. . Porter	92 N.Y. 76	108
1884	In Re the Probate of the Last Will & Testament of Cottrell	95 N.Y. 329	107

Showing the 15 most-cited of 357 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 C. Ruger on?: William C. Ruger 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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9 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).