How do judges of the New Jersey Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New Jersey Supreme Court / Joined 1946 / Served to 1959

William A. Wachenfeld

Justice, New Jersey Supreme Court

William A. Wachenfeld was a Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1946. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1889–1969
Tenure: 1946–1959 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1946	New Jersey Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Polytechnic Institute of New York University
Polytechnic Institute of New York University

Judicial Record

In our data, Wachenfeld authored 267 published opinions for the court (1946–1959), plus 24 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Rainier's Dairies v. Raritan Valley Farms, Inc. (181 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. 29 of these were attributed to Wachenfeld 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
1955	Rainier's Dairies v. Raritan Valley Farms, Inc.· Dissent†	117 A.2d 889	181
1953	State v. Winne· Dissent†	96 A.2d 63	137
1955	State v. Pontery	117 A.2d 473	120
1958	State v. Bucanis	138 A.2d 739	117
1957	Switz v. Township of Middletown· Dissent†	130 A.2d 15	110
1957	Lane v. Holderman	129 A.2d 8	110
1958	Cammarata v. Essex County Park Commission	140 A.2d 397	101
1950	Rempfer v. Deerfield Packing Corp.	72 A.2d 204	95
1957	Martin v. Bengue, Inc.· Dissent†	136 A.2d 626	85
1955	State v. Rogers	116 A.2d 37	85
1952	Monmouth Lumber Co. v. Township of Ocean· Dissent†	87 A.2d 9	83
1957	Morss v. Forbes	132 A.2d 1	78
1949	State v. Auld· Dissent	67 A.2d 175	76
1957	Ford v. Reichert	129 A.2d 439	73
1951	Reingold v. Harper· Dissent†	78 A.2d 54	72

Showing the 15 most-cited of 293 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 Jersey Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was William A. Wachenfeld on?: William A. Wachenfeld was a Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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