Scott L. Kafker

Scott L. Kafker (born April 24, 1959) is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and the former Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Appeals Court.

Kafker graduated from Amherst College in 1981 and from the University of Chicago Law School in 1985, where he was on the Law Review.[1] He served as a law clerk to Justice Charles L. Levin of the Michigan Supreme Court and Judge Mark L. Wolf of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. After clerking, he entered private practice as an associate at the Boston law firm of Foley, Hoag & Eliot, where he worked on labor and employment cases and other commercial disputes.[2] During the administration of Governor William F. Weld, Kafker served as deputy chief legal counsel to the governor and chief legal counsel for the Massachusetts Port Authority. In 2001, he was appointed to the Massachusetts Appeals Court. He was appointed chief justice of that court on July 22, 2015. During his time on the appeals court, Kafker wrote close to 1,000 decisions.[3]

On June 26, 2017, Kafker was nominated by Governor Charlie Baker to replace retiring Justice Geraldine Hines on the Supreme Judicial Court. He was Governor Baker's fifth nominee for the seven-member court.[3] Kafker was confirmed the following month by a unanimous vote of the Governor's Council.[4]