How do judges of the Court of Appeals of North Carolina reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Court of Appeals of North Carolina / Joined 2004 / Served to 2004

Alan Z. Thornburg

Judge, Court of Appeals of North Carolina

Alan Z. Thornburg was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of North Carolina, who joined the court in 2004. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1967 · age 59
Tenure: 2004–2004

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2004	Court of Appeals of North Carolina	–	–

Education

Davidson College
Wake Forest University

Judicial Record

In our data, Thornburg authored 52 published opinions for the court (2004), plus 1 concurrence. Most cited: State v. Carter (26 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. 24 of these were attributed to Thornburg 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
2004	State v. Carter· Concurrence†	605 S.E.2d 676	26
2004	Alexander v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.	603 S.E.2d 552	25
2004	Oakley v. Oakley	599 S.E.2d 925	22
2004	State v. Hines	600 S.E.2d 891	14
2004	Parker v. Willis	606 S.E.2d 184	11
2004	Skinner v. Quintiles Transnational Corp.	606 S.E.2d 191	10
2004	Wood v. BD&A Construction, L.L.C.	601 S.E.2d 311	8
2004	Johnson v. News & Observer Publishing Co.	604 S.E.2d 344	7
2004	Moses H. Cone Memorial Health Services Corp. v. Triplett	605 S.E.2d 492	6
2004	Segovia v. J.L. Powell & Co.†	167 N.C. App. 354	6
2004	Hayes v. Town of Fairmont	605 S.E.2d 717	4
2004	Moore's Ferry Development Corp. v. City of Hickory	601 S.E.2d 900	4
2004	State v. Boston	600 S.E.2d 863	4
2004	State v. Allen	596 S.E.2d 261	3
2004	Revels v. Robeson County Board of Elections†	167 N.C. App. 358	2

Showing the 15 most-cited of 53 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 Court of Appeals of North Carolina reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Alan Z. Thornburg on?: Alan Z. Thornburg was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of North Carolina.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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Joined the court in 2004. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).