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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 2008 / Active

Debra L. Stephens

Chief Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Debra L. Stephens is a Chief Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, serving since 2008. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1965 · age 61
Tenure: Since 2008 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2008	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Gonzaga University
Gonzaga University

Judicial Record

In our data, Stephens authored 178 published opinions for the court (2008–2019), plus 54 dissents and 41 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Ramirez (687 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. 217 of these were attributed to Stephens 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
2018	State v. Ramirez†	426 P.3d 714	687
2009	State v. Sutherby	204 P.3d 916	489
2009	State v. Sutherby†	165 Wash. 2d 870	482
2012	State v. Sublett· Concurrence†	176 Wash. 2d 58	310
2011	In re the Personal Restraint of Coats· Concurrence†	173 Wash. 2d 123	272
2012	In re the Personal Restraint of Crace†	174 Wash. 2d 835	269
2008	State v. Alvarado†	164 Wash. 2d 556	264
2008	State v. Alvarado	192 P.3d 345	259
2010	State v. Valencia	239 P.3d 1059	254
2010	State v. Valencia†	169 Wash. 2d 782	250
2014	State v. W.R.†	181 Wash. 2d 757	209
2013	State v. Graciano†	176 Wash. 2d 531	185
2012	State v. Jasper	271 P.3d 876	157
2010	In re the Personal Restraint of Rainey†	168 Wash. 2d 367	155
2010	In Re Rainey	229 P.3d 686	150

Showing the 15 most-cited of 273 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 Debra L. Stephens on?: Debra L. Stephens is a 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

18 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).