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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1976 / Served to 1999

James Morgan Dolliver

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

James Morgan Dolliver was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1976. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1942–2004
Tenure: 1976–1999 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1976	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Swarthmore College

Judicial Record

In our data, Dolliver authored 407 published opinions for the court (1976–1999), plus 111 dissents and 39 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Salinas (1,796 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. 211 of these were attributed to Dolliver 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
1992	State v. Salinas	829 P.2d 1068	1,796
1980	State v. Green· Concurrence†	616 P.2d 628	1,403
1985	Hartley v. State	698 P.2d 77	636
1987	State v. Thomas· Dissent†	743 P.2d 816	629
1980	State v. Delmarter	618 P.2d 99	583
1986	Seven Gables Corp. v. MGM/UA Entertainment Co.	721 P.2d 1	425
1995	State v. Bone-Club†	128 Wash. 2d 254	405
1995	State v. Brett	892 P.2d 29	373
1995	State v. Bone-Club	906 P.2d 325	371
1984	State v. Ryan· Concurrence†	691 P.2d 197	344
1986	State v. Kennedy· Dissent†	726 P.2d 445	339
1983	Petersen v. State	671 P.2d 230	317
1989	Sofie v. Fibreboard Corp.· Dissent†	780 P.2d 260	308
1984	State v. Campbell· Concurrence†	691 P.2d 929	303
1994	Mt. Park Homeowners Ass'n, Inc. v. Tydings	883 P.2d 1383	302

Showing the 15 most-cited of 557 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 Morgan Dolliver on?: James Morgan Dolliver 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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23 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).