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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Court of Appeals of Washington / Joined 1991 / Served to 2013

Dennis J. Sweeney

Judge, Court of Appeals of Washington

Dennis J. Sweeney was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Washington, who joined the court in 1991. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1991–2013 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1991	Court of Appeals of Washington	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Sweeney authored 1,074 published opinions for the court (1955–2013), plus 52 dissents and 16 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Walton (240 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. 624 of these were attributed to Sweeney 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
1992	State v. Walton	824 P.2d 533	240
1995	Robinson v. Department of Social & Health Services	896 P.2d 1298	89
2004	Skimming v. Boxer†	119 Wash. App. 748	79
2004	Skimming v. Boxer	82 P.3d 707	78
2002	Micro Enhancement v. Coopers & Lybrand, LLP	40 P.3d 1206	77
2005	In Re Welfare of JM	125 P.3d 245	73
2010	In re the Marriage of Zigler†	154 Wash. App. 803	72
2005	In re the Welfare of J.M.†	130 Wash. App. 912	72
2002	Micro Enhancement International, Inc. v. Coopers & Lybrand, L.L.P.†	110 Wash. App. 412	72
1993	Matter of Marriage of Mathews· Dissent†	853 P.2d 462	72
2010	In Re Marriage of Zigler and Sidwell	226 P.3d 202	69
1996	In Re Marriage of Rich	907 P.2d 1234	65
2000	In Re Marriage of Skarbek	997 P.2d 447	60
2000	In re the Marriage of Skarbek†	100 Wash. App. 444	60
1999	B.S. v. Department of Social & Health Services†	94 Wash. App. 511	60

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,142 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 Court of Appeals of Washington reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Dennis J. Sweeney on?: Dennis J. Sweeney was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Washington.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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