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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1984 / Served to 1995

James A. Andersen

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

James A. Andersen was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1984. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1924 · age 102
Tenure: 1984–1995 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1984	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Andersen authored 167 published opinions for the court (1984–1995), plus 18 dissents and 32 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Gunwall (1,052 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. 56 of these were attributed to Andersen 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
1986	State v. Gunwall	720 P.2d 808	1,052
1994	State v. Russell· Dissent†	882 P.2d 747	831
1993	Washington State Physicians Insurance Exchange & Ass'n v. Fisons Corp.	858 P.2d 1054	618
1991	State v. Kjorsvik	812 P.2d 86	539
1995	State v. Gentry	888 P.2d 1105	498
1991	State v. Hoffman	804 P.2d 577	461
1990	State v. Swan	790 P.2d 610	447
1986	Seven Gables Corp. v. MGM/UA Entertainment Co.· Dissent†	721 P.2d 1	425
1994	Progressive Animal Welfare Society v. University of Washington· Concurrence†	125 Wash. 2d 243	373
1986	State v. Kwan Fai Mak	718 P.2d 407	348
1989	Sofie v. Fibreboard Corp.· Concurrence†	780 P.2d 260	308
1995	Queen City Farms, Inc. v. Central Nat'l Ins. Co. of Omaha· Concurrence†	882 P.2d 703	306
1994	State v. Ward· Concurrence†	870 P.2d 295	303
1995	State v. Lough	889 P.2d 487	287
1991	State v. Noltie	809 P.2d 190	279

Showing the 15 most-cited of 217 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 James A. Andersen on?: James A. Andersen 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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11 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).