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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Court of Appeals of North Carolina / Joined 1988 / Served to 1989

Donald P. Smith Jr.

Judge, Court of Appeals of North Carolina

Donald P. Smith Jr. was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1988. He previously served on the Colorado Court of Appeals and Superior Court of California, County of San Diego. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1988–1989 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1972	Colorado Court of Appeals	–	–
1979	Superior Court of California, County of San Diego	–	–
1988	Court of Appeals of North Carolina	–	–

Education

Wake Forest University

Judicial Record

In our data, Smith authored 729 published opinions for the court (1972–2007), plus 5 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: Maxwell v. W.K.A. Inc. (323 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. 161 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
1986	Maxwell v. W.K.A. Inc.	728 P.2d 321	323
1980	In Re Marriage of Davis	618 P.2d 692	276
1993	People ex rel. J.E.B.†	854 P.2d 1372	232
1973	Aztec Sound Corp. v. Western States Leasing Co.	510 P.2d 897	210
1996	Matter of Oghenekevebe	473 S.E.2d 393	205
1977	Enright v. Groves	560 P.2d 851	199
2000	In Re Huff	536 S.E.2d 838	186
1980	Smartt v. Lamar Oil Co.	623 P.2d 73	173
1998	Bruce-Terminix Company v. Zurich Ins. Co.	504 S.E.2d 574	172
1986	Brice v. Wood†	735 P.2d 924	168
1988	People v. Vazquez†	768 P.2d 721	167
1996	Kisiah v. W.R. Kisiah Plumbing, Inc.	476 S.E.2d 434	136
1996	Murray v. Nationwide Mutual Insurance	472 S.E.2d 358	92
1988	Coleman v. Cooper	366 S.E.2d 2	89
1973	Miller v. Carnation Company	516 P.2d 661	88

Showing the 15 most-cited of 739 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 North Carolina reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Donald P. Smith Jr. on?: Donald P. Smith Jr. was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of North Carolina.

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.

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