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 1862 / Served to 1868

William B. Wright

Judge, New York Court of Appeals

William B. Wright was a Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1862. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1806–1868
Tenure: 1862–1868 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1862	New York Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Wright authored 183 published opinions for the court (1847–1867), plus 13 dissents and 30 concurrences. Most cited: The People v. . Kerr (178 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. 55 of these were attributed to Wright 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
1863	The People v. . Kerr· Concurrence	27 N.Y. 188	178
1866	Metropolitan Board of Excise v. . Barrie	34 N.Y. 657	136
1856	Davis v. . the Mayor, C., of New-York· Dissent	14 N.Y. 506	129
1864	Reed v. . Randall	29 N.Y. 358	115
1856	Oldfield v. . the N.Y. and Harlem R.R. Co.	14 N.Y. 310	89
1865	Levy v. . Levy	33 N.Y. 97	81
1864	Everitt v. . Everitt· Dissent	29 N.Y. 39	78
1862	The People v. . the Albany and Vermont Railroad Company	24 N.Y. 261	75
1860	Althorf v. . Wolfe	22 N.Y. 355	71
1860	Holdane v. . Trustees of the Village of Cold Spring	21 N.Y. 474	71
1860	Considerant v. . Brisbane	22 N.Y. 389	68
1864	Payne v. . Gardiner· Dissent	29 N.Y. 146	65
1862	Forrest v. . Forrest	25 N.Y. 501	64
1864	Michaels v. New York Central Railroad	30 N.Y. 564	62
1860	Wilson v. . Robertson	21 N.Y. 587	61

Showing the 15 most-cited of 228 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 B. Wright on?: William B. Wright 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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6 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).