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 1975 / Served to 1985

James William Copeland

Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

James William Copeland was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1975. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1914 · age 112
Tenure: 1975–1985 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1975	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Education

Guilford College
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Judicial Record

In our data, Copeland authored 229 published opinions for the court (1975–1984), plus 18 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Matter of Montgomery (604 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. 29 of these were attributed to Copeland 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
1984	Matter of Montgomery	316 S.E.2d 246	604
1982	State v. Cooke	291 S.E.2d 618	488
1977	Thompson v. Wake County Board of Education	233 S.E.2d 538	241
1982	State v. Pinch	292 S.E.2d 203	218
1976	Oestreicher v. American National Stores, Inc.	225 S.E.2d 797	213
1982	Worthington v. Bynum	290 S.E.2d 599	212
1981	State v. Sturdivant	283 S.E.2d 719	204
1977	State v. Irick	231 S.E.2d 833	181
1979	Moore v. Fieldcrest Mills, Inc.· Dissent†	251 S.E.2d 419	177
1977	State v. Hardy	235 S.E.2d 828	164
1983	State v. Black· Dissent†	303 S.E.2d 804	151
1975	Sink v. Easter	217 S.E.2d 532	142
1977	State Ex Rel. Utilities Commission v. Edmisten· Dissent†	232 S.E.2d 184	136
1977	Manganello v. Permastone, Inc.	231 S.E.2d 678	130
1978	Adams v. North Carolina Department of Natural & Economic Resources· Dissent†	249 S.E.2d 402	127

Showing the 15 most-cited of 248 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 James William Copeland on?: James William Copeland 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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10 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).