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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of North Carolina / Joined 1982 / Served to 1999

Burley B. Mitchell

Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

Burley B. Mitchell was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1982. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1940 · age 86
Tenure: 1982–1999 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1982	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Education

North Carolina State University at Raleigh
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Judicial Record

In our data, Mitchell authored 354 published opinions for the court (1982–1999), plus 51 dissents and 37 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Odom (1,050 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. 116 of these were attributed to Mitchell 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
1983	State v. Odom	300 S.E.2d 375	1,050
1985	White v. White	324 S.E.2d 829	569
1988	State v. Hennis· Dissent†	372 S.E.2d 523	452
1990	State v. Coffey	389 S.E.2d 48	385
1984	Matter of Ballard	319 S.E.2d 227	385
1987	State v. Stokes· Dissent†	352 S.E.2d 653	297
1990	Johnson v. Ruark Obstetrics & Gynecology Associates, P.A.	395 S.E.2d 85	287
1983	State v. Williams	301 S.E.2d 335	283
1984	State v. Hill· Concurrence†	319 S.E.2d 163	282
1993	State v. McCollum	433 S.E.2d 144	269
1991	Woodson v. Rowland· Concurrence†	407 S.E.2d 222	256
1991	State v. Stager	406 S.E.2d 876	243
1994	State v. Green	443 S.E.2d 14	235
1982	Matter of Moore· Concurrence†	293 S.E.2d 127	212
1984	State v. Arrington	319 S.E.2d 254	211

Showing the 15 most-cited of 442 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 Supreme Court of North Carolina reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Burley B. Mitchell on?: Burley B. Mitchell was a Justice of the Supreme Court 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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17 years on the Supreme Court of North Carolina. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).