How do judges of the Supreme Court of North Carolina reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of North Carolina / Joined 1978 / Served to 1982

David M. Britt

Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

David M. Britt was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina (7 judges, selected by partisan election), who joined the court in 1978. He previously served on the Court of Appeals of North Carolina. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1917–2009
Tenure: 1978–1982 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1967	Court of Appeals of North Carolina	–	–
1978	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Education

Wake Forest University
Wake Forest University
Wake Forest University
Wake Forest University

Judicial Record

In our data, Britt authored 887 published opinions for the court (1968–1982), plus 18 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Smith (753 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. 442 of these were attributed to Britt 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. Smith	265 S.E.2d 164	753
1980	Johnson v. Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance	266 S.E.2d 610	302
1979	State v. Barfield	259 S.E.2d 510	288
1979	State v. Goodman	257 S.E.2d 569	272
1981	State v. Hutchins	279 S.E.2d 788	226
1981	State v. Irwin	282 S.E.2d 439	217
1982	Matter of Moore	293 S.E.2d 127	212
1982	Worthington v. Bynum· Dissent†	290 S.E.2d 599	212
1980	Clark v. Clark	271 S.E.2d 58	163
1981	J. T. Hobby & Son, Inc. v. Family Homes of Wake County, Inc.	274 S.E.2d 174	96
1980	Thompson v. Soles	263 S.E.2d 599	87
1980	Texfi Industries, Inc. v. City of Fayetteville	269 S.E.2d 142	79
1982	Lackey v. North Carolina Department of Human Resources	293 S.E.2d 171	73
1982	State v. Stevens	291 S.E.2d 585	71
1981	State v. Milby	273 S.E.2d 716	71

Showing the 15 most-cited of 908 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 Supreme Court of North Carolina reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was David M. Britt on?: David M. Britt was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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4 years on the Supreme Court of North Carolina. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).