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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1971 / Served to 1980

Charles T. Wright

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Charles T. Wright was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1971. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1911–1980
Tenure: 1971–1980 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1971	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Wright authored 126 published opinions for the court (1971–1981), plus 30 dissents and 18 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Wanrow (308 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. 59 of these were attributed to Wright 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
1977	State v. Wanrow· Concurrence†	559 P.2d 548	308
1975	Grimsby v. Samson· Dissent†	530 P.2d 291	296
1974	Morris v. McNicol	519 P.2d 7	202
1976	Morgan v. Prudential Insurance Co. of America· Dissent†	545 P.2d 1193	180
1974	Fritz v. Gorton· Concurrence†	517 P.2d 911	149
1972	Yakima Fruit & Cold Storage Co. v. Central Heating & Plumbing Co.	503 P.2d 108	146
1975	Hunter v. North Mason School Dist.· Concurrence†	539 P.2d 845	137
1975	Brown v. MacPherson's, Inc.· Dissent†	545 P.2d 13	130
1978	State v. Hehman	578 P.2d 527	107
1975	Campbell v. City of Bellevue· Dissent†	530 P.2d 234	105
1977	State v. Smith	559 P.2d 970	100
1973	Stender v. Twin City Foods, Inc.	510 P.2d 221	98
1976	State v. Wright· Concurrence†	557 P.2d 1	89
1975	In Re the Welfare of Myricks	533 P.2d 841	89
1979	State v. McIntyre	600 P.2d 1009	87

Showing the 15 most-cited of 174 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. Wright on?: Charles T. Wright 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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9 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).