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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1998 / Served to 2005

Faith Ireland

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Faith Ireland was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1998. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1942 · age 84
Tenure: 1998–2005 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1998	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Willamette University

Judicial Record

In our data, Ireland authored 154 published opinions for the court (1999–2006), plus 23 dissents and 9 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Thomas (973 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. 109 of these were attributed to Ireland 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
2004	State v. Thomas†	150 Wash. 2d 821	973
2004	State v. Thomas	83 P.3d 970	960
2004	In Re Davis	101 P.3d 1	686
2004	In re the Personal Restraint of Davis†	152 Wash. 2d 647	682
2004	In re the Personal Restraint of Orange· Dissent†	152 Wash. 2d 795	360
2000	State v. Roberts· Dissent†	142 Wash. 2d 471	341
2000	State v. Fernandez-Medina· Dissent†	141 Wash. 2d 448	306
2002	State v. Brown†	147 Wash. 2d 330	271
2000	King County v. Central Puget Sound	14 P.3d 133	255
2000	King County v. Central Puget Sound Growth Management Hearings Board†	142 Wash. 2d 543	254
1999	State v. Tili†	139 Wash. 2d 107	252
1999	State v. Tili	985 P.2d 365	250
2001	State v. Clark· Dissent†	143 Wash. 2d 731	214
2004	In re the Personal Restraint of Isadore†	151 Wash. 2d 294	201
1999	State v. WWJ Corp.	980 P.2d 1257	201

Showing the 15 most-cited of 186 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 Faith Ireland on?: Faith Ireland 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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7 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).