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 1985 / Served to 1985

Earl W. Vaughn

Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

Earl W. Vaughn was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina (7 judges, selected by partisan election), who joined the court in 1985. He previously served on the Court of Appeals of North Carolina. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1928–1986
Tenure: 1985–1985

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1969	Court of Appeals of North Carolina	–	–
1985	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Education

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Judicial Record

In our data, Vaughn authored 974 published opinions for the court (1969–1985), plus 46 dissents and 17 concurrences. Most cited: Cannon v. Miller (93 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. 599 of these were attributed to Vaughn 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
1985	Cannon v. Miller†	327 S.E.2d 888	93
1980	Howell v. Fisher	272 S.E.2d 19	77
1984	Matter of Whisnant	322 S.E.2d 434	73
1984	Matter of Pierce	312 S.E.2d 900	64
1984	Dixon v. Dixon	312 S.E.2d 669	50
1970	Lee v. Shor	178 S.E.2d 101	50
1974	Barnes Ex Rel. Underwood v. McGee	204 S.E.2d 203	45
1982	State v. Casey· Concurrence†	296 S.E.2d 473	43
1984	Poe v. Acme Builders†	69 N.C. App. 147	42
1983	Matter of Norris	310 S.E.2d 25	39
1983	State v. Bell· Dissent†	309 S.E.2d 464	39
1983	Four Seasons Homeowners Ass'n v. W. K. Sellers	302 S.E.2d 848	38
1984	Brooks v. Gooden· Concurrence†	318 S.E.2d 348	36
1979	Newsome v. Newsome	256 S.E.2d 849	36
1981	In Re Biggers	274 S.E.2d 236	35

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,037 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 Earl W. Vaughn on?: Earl W. Vaughn 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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Joined the court in 1985. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).