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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1970 / Served to 1984

Charles F. Stafford

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Charles F. Stafford was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1970. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1918–1984
Tenure: 1970–1984 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1970	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Whitman College
Yale University

Judicial Record

In our data, Stafford authored 236 published opinions for the court (1963–1984), plus 31 dissents and 49 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Green (1,403 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. 100 of these were attributed to Stafford 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
1980	State v. Green	616 P.2d 628	1,403
1973	In Re Welfare of Sego	513 P.2d 831	470
1978	Seattle School District No. 1 v. State	585 P.2d 71	335
1975	Grimsby v. Samson	530 P.2d 291	296
1981	State v. Seagull	632 P.2d 44	263
1981	State v. Williams	634 P.2d 868	259
1984	State v. Coe	684 P.2d 668	231
1977	State v. Partin	567 P.2d 1136	222
1983	In Re the Personal Restraint of Hews	660 P.2d 263	214
1983	Chambers-Castanes v. King County	669 P.2d 451	207
1980	State v. Cunningham	613 P.2d 1139	205
1975	LaPlante v. State	531 P.2d 299	201
1980	Wagner v. Wagner	621 P.2d 1279	172
1977	Roberts v. Atlantic Richfield Co.	568 P.2d 764	172
1972	State v. Reader's Digest Ass'n	501 P.2d 290	168

Showing the 15 most-cited of 316 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 F. Stafford on?: Charles F. Stafford 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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14 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).