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 1998 / Served to 2006

George L. Wainwright Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

George L. Wainwright Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1998. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1943 · age 83
Tenure: 1998–2006 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1998	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Education

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Wake Forest University

Judicial Record

In our data, Wainwright authored 58 published opinions for the court (1999–2006), plus 2 dissents. Most cited: Howerton v. Arai Helmet, Ltd. (299 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. 13 of these were attributed to Wainwright 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	Howerton v. Arai Helmet, Ltd.	597 S.E.2d 674	299
2000	State v. Golphin	533 S.E.2d 168	299
2000	State v. Wallace	528 S.E.2d 326	195
2001	Lenox, Inc. v. Tolson	548 S.E.2d 513	150
2002	State v. Kemmerlin	573 S.E.2d 870	132
1999	Marcus Bros. Textiles, Inc. v. Price Waterhouse, LLP	513 S.E.2d 320	111
2001	State v. Parker	553 S.E.2d 885	108
2003	State v. Haselden	577 S.E.2d 594	107
2001	State v. Matias	556 S.E.2d 269	90
2002	State v. Prevatte	570 S.E.2d 440	84
2006	Builders Mutual Insurance v. North Main Construction, Ltd.	637 S.E.2d 528	76
2002	Thigpen v. Ngo	558 S.E.2d 162	71
2001	State v. Call	545 S.E.2d 190	60
2000	Brisson v. Kathy A. Santoriello, M.D., P.A.· Dissent†	528 S.E.2d 568	59
2000	State v. Buckner	527 S.E.2d 307	59

Showing the 15 most-cited of 60 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 George L. Wainwright Jr. on?: George L. Wainwright Jr. 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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8 years on the Supreme Court of North Carolina. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).