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 1966 / Served to 2006

I Beverly Lake Sr.

Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

I Beverly Lake Sr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1966. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1906–1996
Tenure: 1966–2006 · 40 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1966	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–
1985	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Education

Wake Forest University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Lake authored 391 published opinions for the court (1965–2006), plus 45 dissents and 16 concurrences. Most cited: Wachovia Bank & Trust Co. v. Westchester Fire Insurance (292 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. 129 of these were attributed to Lake 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
1970	Wachovia Bank & Trust Co. v. Westchester Fire Insurance	172 S.E.2d 518	292
1978	State v. Fulcher	243 S.E.2d 338	271
1971	State v. Vestal	180 S.E.2d 755	236
1967	State v. Cutler	156 S.E.2d 679	207
1966	State v. Gray	150 S.E.2d 1	194
1969	State v. Atkinson	167 S.E.2d 241	191
1971	State v. Westbrook	181 S.E.2d 572	177
1976	Smith v. Ford Motor Co.	221 S.E.2d 282	170
1975	State v. Hankerson· Concurrence†	220 S.E.2d 575	170
1977	In Re Inquiry Concerning Judge Nowell· Dissent†	237 S.E.2d 246	157
1970	State v. Sparrow· Concurrence†	173 S.E.2d 897	152
1978	North Carolina State Ports Authority v. Lloyd A. Fry Roofing Co.	240 S.E.2d 345	143
1973	State v. Waddell· Concurrence†	194 S.E.2d 19	142
1971	Link v. Link	179 S.E.2d 697	141
1978	In Re Inquiry Concerning Judge Hardy· Concurrence†	240 S.E.2d 367	137

Showing the 15 most-cited of 452 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 I Beverly Lake Sr. on?: I Beverly Lake Sr. 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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40 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).