How do judges of the Court of Appeals of North Carolina reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Court of Appeals of North Carolina / Joined 1973 / Served to 1974

James M. Baley Jr.

Judge, Court of Appeals of North Carolina

James M. Baley Jr. was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1973. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1912–2003
Tenure: 1973–1974 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1973	Court of Appeals of North Carolina	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Baley authored 138 published opinions for the court (1973–1974), plus 11 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Mezzanotte v. Freeland (83 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. 91 of these were attributed to Baley 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
1973	Mezzanotte v. Freeland	200 S.E.2d 410	83
1974	Domestic Electric Service, Inc. v. City of Rocky Mount	201 S.E.2d 508	24
1974	Bennett v. Bennett	204 S.E.2d 554	23
1974	Todd v. Creech	209 S.E.2d 293	18
1973	United Artists Records, Inc. v. Eastern Tape Corp.	198 S.E.2d 452	17
1974	State v. Carr	204 S.E.2d 892	16
1974	Paschall v. Paschall	203 S.E.2d 337	16
1974	Smith v. Keator	203 S.E.2d 411	16
1973	State v. McDougald	197 S.E.2d 11	16
1973	Highfill v. Williamson· Dissent†	199 S.E.2d 469	14
1974	In Re Bullard	206 S.E.2d 305	13
1974	Searcy Ex Rel. Schiro v. Justice	202 S.E.2d 314	12
1973	Tanner v. State Department of Correction	200 S.E.2d 350	12
1974	Strickland v. General Building & Masonry Contractors, Inc.· Dissent†	207 S.E.2d 399	11
1974	R. E. Uptegraff Manufacturing Co. v. International Union of Electrical Radio & Machine Workers†	20 N.C. App. 544	11

Showing the 15 most-cited of 150 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 Court of Appeals of North Carolina reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was James M. Baley Jr. on?: James M. Baley Jr. was a Judge of the Court of Appeals 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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1 year on the Court of Appeals of North Carolina. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).