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

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Connecticut Supreme Court / Joined 1959 / Served to 1965

William J. Shea

Justice, Connecticut Supreme Court

William J. Shea was a Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1959. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1900–1965
Tenure: 1959–1965 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1959	Connecticut Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Trinity College

Judicial Record

In our data, Shea authored 27 published opinions for the court (1959–1964), plus 3 dissents. Most cited: Tarasovic v. Zoning Commission (55 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. 16 of these were attributed to Shea 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
1959	Tarasovic v. Zoning Commission	147 Conn. 65	55
1963	Hebb v. Zoning Board of Appeals†	150 Conn. 539	39
1961	Gores v. Rosenthal†	148 Conn. 218	38
1964	Blados v. Blados†	151 Conn. 391	36
1963	MacK v. Saars· Dissent†	150 Conn. 290	35
1962	Bentley v. Dynarski	150 Conn. 147	34
1963	W. H. McCune, Inc. v. Revzon	151 Conn. 107	31
1961	Town of Waterford v. Connecticut State Board of Education· Dissent†	148 Conn. 238	31
1960	Carter v. Carter†	147 Conn. 238	29
1959	State v. Cesero	146 Conn. 375	24
1963	Ellis v. Emhart Manufacturing Co.	150 Conn. 501	23
1960	Weidlich v. Weidlich	147 Conn. 160	23
1963	Plunkett v. Nationwide Mutual Insurance†	150 Conn. 203	21
1962	Local 1078, United Automobile Workers of America v. Anaconda American Brass Co.†	149 Conn. 687	19
1962	E. Paul Kovacs & Co. v. Blumgarten†	150 Conn. 8	16

Showing the 15 most-cited of 30 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 Connecticut Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was William J. Shea on?: William J. Shea was a Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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