How do judges of the Washington Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1993 / Former Justice

Barbara Madsen

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Barbara Madsen was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court (9 judges, selected by nonpartisan election), who joined the court in 1993. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1952 · age 74
Tenure: 1993 · 33 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1993	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Gonzaga University

Judicial Record

In our data, Madsen authored 666 published opinions for the court (1993–2019), plus 160 dissents and 224 concurrences. Most cited: Department of Ecology v. Campbell & Gwinn, L.L.C. (1,615 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. 732 of these were attributed to Madsen 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
2002	Department of Ecology v. Campbell & Gwinn, L.L.C.†	146 Wash. 2d 1	1,615
2002	State, Dept. of Ecology v. Campbell & Gwinn	43 P.3d 4	1,608
2011	State v. Grier†	171 Wash. 2d 17	1,036
2004	State v. Thomas· Concurrence†	150 Wash. 2d 821	973
1994	State v. Russell	882 P.2d 747	831
2011	State v. Thorgerson	258 P.3d 43	702
2009	State v. Kyllo†	166 Wash. 2d 856	695
2009	State v. Kyllo	215 P.3d 177	680
1997	State v. Brown· Concurrence†	132 Wash. 2d 529	632
2015	State v. Blazina†	182 Wash. 2d 827	560
1995	State v. Powell	893 P.2d 615	542
2008	State v. Warren· Concurrence†	165 Wash. 2d 17	511
2004	State v. Reichenbach	101 P.3d 80	487
2004	State v. Reichenbach†	153 Wash. 2d 126	487
2012	In re the Personal Restraint of Glasmann†	175 Wash. 2d 696	436

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,050 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 Washington Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Barbara Madsen on?: Barbara Madsen was a Justice of the Washington 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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33 years on the Washington Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).