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 1983 / Served to 2001

Henry E. Frye

Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

Henry E. Frye was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1983. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1932 · age 94
Tenure: 1983–2001 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Education

North Carolina A & T State University
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Judicial Record

In our data, Frye authored 332 published opinions for the court (1983–2000), plus 54 dissents and 41 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Benson (388 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. 136 of these were attributed to Frye 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. Benson· Concurrence†	372 S.E.2d 517	388
1988	United Laboratories, Inc. v. Kuykendall	370 S.E.2d 375	325
1984	State v. Bullard	322 S.E.2d 370	304
1989	State v. Artis· Dissent†	384 S.E.2d 470	287
1997	In Re Young	485 S.E.2d 612	255
1986	Thomas M. McInnis & Associates, Inc. v. Hall	349 S.E.2d 552	245
1992	Roumillat v. Simplistic Enterprises, Inc.· Dissent†	414 S.E.2d 339	238
1987	State v. Holden· Dissent†	362 S.E.2d 513	234
2000	Gray v. North Carolina Insurance Underwriting	529 S.E.2d 676	231
1985	Oates v. Jag, Inc.	333 S.E.2d 222	214
1997	State v. Barnes· Dissent†	481 S.E.2d 44	178
1986	Jackson v. Bumgardner	347 S.E.2d 743	174
1988	State v. Wilson	367 S.E.2d 589	172
1985	Black v. Littlejohn	325 S.E.2d 469	154
1992	Amos v. Oakdale Knitting Co.	416 S.E.2d 166	152

Showing the 15 most-cited of 427 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 Henry E. Frye on?: Henry E. Frye 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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18 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).