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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1988 / Served to 2003

Charles Z. Smith

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Charles Z. Smith was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1988. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1927 · age 99
Tenure: 1988–2003 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1988	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Temple University

Judicial Record

In our data, Smith authored 258 published opinions for the court (1989–2003), plus 3 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Brown (632 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. 109 of these were attributed to Smith 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
1997	State v. Brown†	132 Wash. 2d 529	632
1996	State v. Manussier	921 P.2d 473	269
1996	State v. Manussier†	129 Wash. 2d 652	264
1996	Stiley v. Block†	130 Wash. 2d 486	226
1996	State v. Johnson†	128 Wash. 2d 431	221
1992	State v. Ortiz· Concurrence†	831 P.2d 1060	215
1989	State v. Leach	782 P.2d 552	215
2002	State v. Watson†	146 Wash. 2d 947	208
2003	State v. Acrey	64 P.3d 594	204
1998	State v. Riles†	135 Wash. 2d 326	204
2003	State v. Acrey†	148 Wash. 2d 738	200
2001	State v. Keller†	143 Wash. 2d 267	194
1996	State v. Aten†	130 Wash. 2d 640	189
2001	Berger v. Sonneland	26 P.3d 257	186
2001	Berger v. Sonneland†	144 Wash. 2d 91	186

Showing the 15 most-cited of 267 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 Z. Smith on?: Charles Z. Smith 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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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).