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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1956 / Served to 1962

Harry Ellsworth Foster

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Harry Ellsworth Foster was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1956. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1898–1956
Tenure: 1956–1962 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1956	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Foster authored 164 published opinions for the court (1956–1962), plus 21 dissents and 16 concurrences. Most cited: Thorndike v. Hesperian Orchards, Inc. (601 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. 58 of these were attributed to Foster 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
1959	Thorndike v. Hesperian Orchards, Inc.	343 P.2d 183	601
1960	Jones v. Hogan	351 P.2d 153	96
1958	Windust v. Department of Labor & Industries· Dissent†	323 P.2d 241	85
1959	Chase v. Beard	346 P.2d 315	83
1960	Owens v. Kuro	354 P.2d 696	67
1957	Kane v. Klos	314 P.2d 672	63
1962	Albin v. National Bank of Commerce· Concurrence†	375 P.2d 487	62
1962	State v. Taylor	371 P.2d 617	61
1960	Peterson v. Hagan	351 P.2d 127	58
1960	Dlouhy v. Dlouhy	349 P.2d 1073	53
1957	Koon v. Koon	313 P.2d 369	52
1960	Mills v. Orcas Power & Light Co.	355 P.2d 781	50
1962	State Ex Rel. Zempel v. Twitchell· Concurrence†	367 P.2d 985	49
1958	Barber v. Rochester	328 P.2d 711	48
1960	Pacific Indemnity Co. v. Thompson	355 P.2d 12	47

Showing the 15 most-cited of 201 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 Harry Ellsworth Foster on?: Harry Ellsworth Foster 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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6 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).