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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 2011 / Former Justice

Charles K. Wiggins

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Charles K. Wiggins was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2011. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1947 · age 79
Tenure: 2011 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2011	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Princeton University
Duke University

Judicial Record

In our data, Wiggins authored 88 published opinions for the court (2011–2019), plus 43 dissents and 22 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Homan (444 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. 146 of these were attributed to Wiggins 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
2014	State v. Homan†	181 Wash. 2d 102	444
2012	In re the Personal Restraint of Glasmann· Dissent†	175 Wash. 2d 696	436
2012	State v. Sublett· Concurrence†	176 Wash. 2d 58	310
2012	In re the Personal Restraint of Crace· Concurrence†	174 Wash. 2d 835	269
2014	In re the Personal Restraint of Cross†	180 Wash. 2d 664	211
2014	Scrivener v. Clark College†	181 Wash. 2d 439	204
2013	State v. Graciano· Dissent†	176 Wash. 2d 531	185
2013	State v. Evans· Dissent†	177 Wash. 2d 186	182
2013	State v. Dye†	178 Wash. 2d 541	170
2013	State v. Vasquez†	178 Wash. 2d 1	166
2011	Jenkins v. Department of Social & Health Services†	171 Wash. 2d 568	146
2014	Durland v. San Juan County†	182 Wash. 2d 55	134
2011	In Re Dependency of KNJ	257 P.3d 522	131
2014	State v. Smith· Concurrence†	181 Wash. 2d 508	127
2012	State v. Davis· Concurrence†	175 Wash. 2d 287	124

Showing the 15 most-cited of 153 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 K. Wiggins on?: Charles K. Wiggins was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court.

Sources

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

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15 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).