From developing key policies affecting judicial security and criminal justice, to appointing or reappointing the vast majority of current state judges, the two-term Democrat shaped the way citizens and litigants interact with the law in the Garden State.
Murphy guided the state's bail reform project, launched under his predecessor Chris Christie, through its early years and legal challenges.
It was under his watch that New Jersey broke ground on privacy measures for judges and other public officials with Daniel's Law, which has run into stiff opposition in multiple lawsuits in years since.
But the governor's greatest imprint on the state judiciary may have come by bringing the state's trial court vacancy rate to a historic low and appointing five of the seven New Jersey Supreme Court justices — the most justices since Christine Todd Whitman.
"I think he's done a great benefit to the state and to the bar," former Supreme Court Justice Barry Albin said of Murphy's high court appointments.
With Murphy's tenure as governor ending next week, Law360 broke down his legacy on access to justice in New Jersey and the functioning of the state judiciary.
Deep Influence on the Judiciary
One of Murphy's longest-lasting legacies may be his significant influence on the New Jersey Supreme Court.
Outgoing New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy provided highlights of his tenure, including the appointment of five Supreme Court justices, on Jan. 13 during a "state of the state" address before the state Legislature in Trenton.
Murphy appointed the highest share of justices on the court since Whitman, who had appointed six of seven justices by the time she left office in 2001. And Justices Noriega, Wainer Apter and Pierre-Louis are in their 40s, giving them possibly decades of influence on the court.
"His appointments will have a significant impact on the Supreme Court for a generation," said former Justice Albin, now a partner at Lowenstein Sandler LLP.
Former Supreme Court Justice Peter Verniero, now a member at Sills Cummis & Gross PC, echoed that Murphy made "high caliber" picks for the court who have potentially long tenures ahead of them.
"The appointment of even one member of the Supreme Court can have an impact," the former justice wrote in an email. "Gov. Murphy has appointed five new members, so his impact on the court — and on the judiciary as a whole — will be that much greater."
Murphy preserved the court's traditional political balance, and former Justice Albin further praised Murphy for picking ideologically moderate justices.
Most of Murphy's picks for the court passed through the Senate's approval process without difficulty, but at least one faced political pushback. Murphy's nomination of Justice Wainer Apter in particular drew opposition from Republicans in the state Legislature, and her seat remained unfilled for over a year until she was sworn in as part of a package with Justice Fasciale.
Former Justice Albin also noted the diverse kinds of experience Murphy's picks bring to the bench, from Justice Noriega's background as a public defender — making him the first public defender on the court — to Justice Hoffman's previous experience as general counsel for Rutgers University.
"This is a wealth of experience, and they are supremely talented lawyers and jurists," the former justice said.
Murphy said in his final State of the State address on Tuesday that the justices he appointed "represent a diversity of life experiences and viewpoints. And they are members of both political parties."
He added that he committed to maintaining a political balance in the judiciary because it is "the best way to restore public confidence in the rule of law."
Murphy also had a profound impact on the makeup of the state Superior Court through a tumultuous time in which the state trial court handled significant disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic and a persistent vacancy crisis.
Staffing the Superior Court was a divisive issue during Murphy's tenure. The courts reached a height of 78 judgeship vacancies in 2022, which, combined with a backlog of cases built up during COVID, became a crisis. Court leaders including Chief Justice Stuart Rabner and then-Administrative Director Glenn Grant spoke out about the issue repeatedly, and the shortage of judges led Justice Rabner to cancel civil and matrimonial trials in several vicinages in 2023.
By the time he left office, however, Murphy had appointed a total of 245 new Superior Court judges — including a final slate of 16 nominees confirmed Monday — and reappointed hundreds more, for a total of 458 appointments and reappointments out of a total of 463 judgeships, according to data released by the governor's office Tuesday.
The court system has the lowest number of vacancies it's had in over 20 years, at 11 vacancies, the governor's office said, and 17 of New Jersey's 21 counties have no vacancies.
"Since taking office, we have been laser-focused on appointing high-quality nominees to the Superior Court from across the legal profession," Murphy said Tuesday in a statement. "Our administration is proud to leave the judiciary nearly fully staffed, ensuring that more New Jerseyans get the justice they deserve in a timely manner."
Guiding Bail Reform to Success
Murphy oversaw the bulk of the rollout of New Jersey's bail reform project, a groundbreaking change to criminal justice in the state.
Passed into law in 2014 and first taking effect in 2017 under Christie, the legislation required judges to decide on pretrial release for defendants based on various risk factors. Previously, judges could only set a monetary amount that defendants had to pay, which critics said trapped low-income defendants in jail while failing to stop high-risk defendants from paying their way out.
By the numbers, the project significantly decreased the number of inmates held in jail in New Jersey for minor crimes.
A 2023 report on the project from the state Joint Committee on Criminal Justice found that in 2012, prior to bail reform, nearly 12% of the New Jersey county jail population was in custody because they could not post bail of $2,500 or less. In 2020, after bail reform, that figure was down to 0.2%. The report also found that after bail reform a greater share of people in jail had been arrested for serious offenses, and that defendants released pretrial appeared at court hearings at a higher rate.
Alex Shalom, chair of the Lowenstein Center for the Public Interest at Lowenstein Sandler LLP, was an early advocate for bail reform. He told Law360 Pulse that the project was "transformational" and made New Jersey a national model.
Murphy deserves credit for stewarding the project during its early stages, according to Shalom. The legislation faced pushback shortly after its passage, including one legal challenge that went to the Third Circuit. Shalom praised Murphy and his administration for resisting pressure from critics who warned about a wave of crime resulting from the reform.
"New Jersey gets a lot of credit for not doing that finger-pointing, and ultimately the governor and the attorneys general who served under him get some of that credit," Shalom said.
Bail reform was originally a Christie-era project, Shalom said, and the strength of New Jersey's take on bail reform is the bipartisan support it received from both Republicans and Democrats like Murphy.
"I think the reason New Jersey's bail reform has been so successful is that it was developed on a bipartisan basis and was nurtured on a bipartisan basis," Shalom said.
Shalom also said Murphy's backing of bail reform was typical of the governor's willingness to explore unconventional ways to reduce the number of people held in jail and prison in New Jersey.
He cited Murphy's expansive use of his power to grant clemency as another example. Murphy had pardoned over 300 people as of December 2025 through his clemency initiative, launched in June 2024.
Shalom also pointed to an early release program that Murphy spearheaded in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, through which thousands of inmates got out of prison early as a public health measure.
"When I think about Gov. Murphy's legacy, bail reform is certainly part of it, for protecting it and not letting it get tinkered with in ways that would have been really harmful but may have satisfied a political moment," Shalom said.
Strides, Followed by Backlash, on Judicial Security
Murphy oversaw a significant shift in the way New Jersey handles privacy and security for members of the judiciary by signing into effect Daniel's Law in November 2020, putting New Jersey at the forefront of the issue but also inviting years of heated litigation.
Championed by U.S. District Judge Esther Salas of New Jersey, whose son was murdered by a former litigant who found her home address online, the law allows judges, prosecutors and other public officials to request to have their addresses and phone numbers made private online.
In a statement when he signed the law, Murphy called it a "renewed commitment to ensure our judiciary, prosecutors, and members of law enforcement who answer the call of justice can do so without fear for their personal safety, or that of their loved ones."
In the second half of his term as governor, however, Murphy signed off on 2023 amendments to the law that allowed people covered by it to assign their rights to third parties, which ultimately led to multiple constitutionality challenges and has left the law's future uncertain.
Daniel's Law survived a challenge before the New Jersey Supreme Court in June from journalist Charles Kratovil, who argued that the law was being unconstitutionally used to block him from reporting the address of the police director of New Brunswick.
But the law currently faces another challenge before the Third Circuit, stemming from a wave of over a hundred lawsuits filed by Atlas Data Privacy Inc. The company filed the suits against a number of online data brokers on behalf of thousands of covered people who assigned their rights to Atlas.
The data broker defendants in the case have argued that the law's lack of a state of mind requirement for awarding damages makes it unconstitutional. The Third Circuit requested a ruling from the New Jersey Supreme Court on the state of mind requirement in September, which the court agreed to provide in October in the most recent move in the litigation.
Amid that litigation, lawmakers and others in New Jersey have begun a push to reform Daniel's Law.
In April a group of companies and individuals launched the Public Safety Information Protection Coalition to encourage legislators to remove the 2023 amendments, which the coalition says opened the door to using the law as a "money chase." In November, state Sen. Gordon Johnson introduced a bill to repeal those amendments.
Bruce Rosen, a First Amendment expert and partner at Pashman Stein Walder Hayden PC, said Daniel's Law is a mixed part of Murphy's legacy as governor.
The federal litigation around Daniel's Law's is a "hornet's nest" that Murphy could have avoided, Rosen said.
"His counsel's office should have examined it much more closely and realized that there were serious First Amendment issues with it," Rosen said.
Rosen added that although threats to judicial safety are a real concern, the state Legislature also acted too hastily in passing legislation that now may end up being thrown out by the Third Circuit.
"It was a sort of knee-jerk reaction to the situation without informing themselves of the First Amendment implications," Rosen said.
--Editing by Robert Rudinger.