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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1991 / Active

Charles W. Johnson

Associate Chief Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Charles W. Johnson is an Associate Chief Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, serving since 1991. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1951 · age 75
Tenure: Since 1991 · 35 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1991	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Johnson authored 298 published opinions for the court (1991–2004), plus 67 dissents and 23 concurrences. Most cited: State v. McFarland (2,396 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. 218 of these were attributed to Johnson 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
1995	State v. McFarland	899 P.2d 1251	2,396
1995	State v. Pirtle	904 P.2d 245	563
1995	State v. Pirtle†	127 Wash. 2d 628	557
1995	State v. Gentry· Dissent†	888 P.2d 1105	498
1998	Folsom v. Burger King	958 P.2d 301	471
1998	Folsom v. Burger King†	135 Wash. 2d 658	466
1993	Matter of Personal Restraint of Young· Dissent†	857 P.2d 989	407
1999	State v. Ford†	137 Wash. 2d 472	399
2000	State v. Roberts†	142 Wash. 2d 471	341
1994	State v. Young	867 P.2d 593	327
1993	State v. Halstien	857 P.2d 270	327
1998	Reid v. Pierce County	961 P.2d 333	279
1998	Reid v. Pierce County†	136 Wash. 2d 195	261
2003	State v. Delgado†	148 Wash. 2d 723	259
2000	King County v. Central Puget Sound Growth Management Hearings Board· Dissent†	142 Wash. 2d 543	254

Showing the 15 most-cited of 388 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 is Charles W. Johnson on?: Charles W. Johnson is an Associate Chief 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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35 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).