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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1949 / Served to 1967

Charles T. Donworth

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Charles T. Donworth was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1949. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1892–1976
Tenure: 1949–1967 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1949	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Yale University

Judicial Record

In our data, Donworth authored 541 published opinions for the court (1949–1970), plus 63 dissents and 30 concurrences. Most cited: Gruen v. State Tax Commission (166 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. 164 of these were attributed to Donworth 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
1949	Gruen v. State Tax Commission· Dissent	211 P.2d 651	166
1960	State v. Baker	355 P.2d 806	147
1962	State v. White	374 P.2d 942	141
1953	State v. Emmanuel	259 P.2d 845	129
1953	Pierce v. Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital Ass'n· Dissent†	260 P.2d 765	113
1954	State Ex Rel. Lemon v. Langlie	273 P.2d 464	93
1958	Windust v. Department of Labor & Industries· Concurrence†	323 P.2d 241	85
1966	In RE DILLENBURG v. Maxwell	413 P.2d 940	83
1967	State v. Walcott· Dissent†	435 P.2d 994	72
1953	Cantrill v. American Mail Line, Ltd.	257 P.2d 179	72
1970	Estill v. Sisters of Charity	479 P.2d 1	71
1964	State Ex Rel. Sowers v. Olwell	394 P.2d 681	71
1965	Deaconess Hospital v. Washington State Highway Commission· Concurrence†	403 P.2d 54	69
1965	Treffry v. Taylor· Dissent†	408 P.2d 269	67
1956	DeGrief v. City of Seattle	297 P.2d 940	64

Showing the 15 most-cited of 634 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 Charles T. Donworth on?: Charles T. Donworth 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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18 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).