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 1979 / Served to 1983

J Phil Carlton

Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

J Phil Carlton was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1979. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1938 · age 88
Tenure: 1979–1983 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Education

North Carolina State University at Raleigh
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Judicial Record

In our data, Carlton authored 96 published opinions for the court (1979–1983), plus 19 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Powell (682 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. 38 of these were attributed to Carlton 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
1980	State v. Powell	261 S.E.2d 114	682
1982	State v. Earnhardt	296 S.E.2d 649	465
1979	State v. Goodman· Concurrence†	257 S.E.2d 569	272
1982	Quick v. Quick	290 S.E.2d 653	267
1980	Coastal Ready-Mix Concrete Co. v. Board of Commissioners	265 S.E.2d 379	266
1981	State v. Hutchins· Dissent†	279 S.E.2d 788	226
1982	Lowe v. Bradford	289 S.E.2d 363	225
1982	State v. Pinch· Concurrence†	292 S.E.2d 203	218
1982	Matter of Moore· Dissent†	293 S.E.2d 127	212
1982	Worthington v. Bynum· Concurrence†	290 S.E.2d 599	212
1982	State v. Brown	293 S.E.2d 569	192
1980	State Ex Rel. Commissioner of Insurance v. North Carolina Rate Bureau	269 S.E.2d 547	188
1983	State v. Strickland· Dissent†	298 S.E.2d 645	175
1980	Williams v. Williams	261 S.E.2d 849	156
1981	State v. Rook	283 S.E.2d 732	151

Showing the 15 most-cited of 126 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 J Phil Carlton on?: J Phil Carlton 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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4 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).