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 1982 / Served to 1992

Harry C. Martin

Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

Harry C. Martin was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1982. He previously served on the Court of Appeals of North Carolina. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1920 · age 106
Tenure: 1982–1992 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1978	Court of Appeals of North Carolina	–	–
1982	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Education

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

Judicial Record

In our data, Martin authored 204 published opinions for the court (1982–1992), plus 71 dissents and 27 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Hennis (452 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. 120 of these were attributed to Martin 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
1988	State v. Hennis	372 S.E.2d 523	452
1992	Corum v. University of North Carolina	413 S.E.2d 276	432
1988	State v. Benson	372 S.E.2d 517	388
1983	State v. Jackson	305 S.E.2d 703	345
1988	State v. Vandiver†	321 N.C. 570	334
1988	State v. Vandiver	364 S.E.2d 373	321
1990	Goldston v. American Motors Corp.	392 S.E.2d 735	296
1988	Boudreau v. Baughman	368 S.E.2d 849	288
1986	Waste Management of Carolinas, Inc. v. Peerless Insurance	340 S.E.2d 374	288
1989	State v. Artis	384 S.E.2d 470	287
1989	Collingwood v. General Electric Real Estate Equities, Inc.†	324 N.C. 63	258
1983	State v. Oliver· Concurrence†	307 S.E.2d 304	250
1985	State v. Kinch	331 S.E.2d 665	220
1989	Coman v. Thomas Manufacturing Co.†	381 S.E.2d 445	209
1991	Hajmm Co. v. House of Raeford Farms, Inc.· Dissent†	403 S.E.2d 483	202

Showing the 15 most-cited of 302 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 Harry C. Martin on?: Harry C. Martin 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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10 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).