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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1946 / Served to 1957

Edgar Ward Schwellenbach

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Edgar Ward Schwellenbach was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1946. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1887–1957
Tenure: 1946–1957 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1946	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Schwellenbach authored 296 published opinions for the court (1946–1958), plus 50 dissents and 40 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Britton (138 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. 101 of these were attributed to Schwellenbach 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
1947	State v. Britton	178 P.2d 341	138
1952	Borst v. Borst· Dissent†	251 P.2d 149	112
1953	Adkisson v. City of Seattle	258 P.2d 461	89
1951	Power, Inc. v. Huntley· Concurrence†	235 P.2d 173	73
1951	Senior Citizens League, Inc. v. Department of Social Security· Dissent†	228 P.2d 478	72
1951	State v. Thompson· Concurrence†	232 P.2d 87	65
1948	In Re the Employees of Buffelen Lumber & Manufacturing Co.· Concurrence	201 P.2d 194	61
1953	Roehl v. Public Utility District No. 1· Dissent†	261 P.2d 92	59
1949	Martin v. Seigel	212 P.2d 107	59
1957	Johnson v. Nasi	309 P.2d 380	57
1957	Sandeman v. Sayres	314 P.2d 428	54
1957	State v. Rinkes· Dissent†	306 P.2d 205	53
1956	Rodruck v. Sand Point Maintenance Commission	295 P.2d 714	50
1955	Rufener v. Scott	280 P.2d 253	48
1957	Croton Chemical Corp. v. Birkenwald, Inc.· Dissent†	314 P.2d 622	47

Showing the 15 most-cited of 386 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 was Edgar Ward Schwellenbach on?: Edgar Ward Schwellenbach was a 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

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11 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).