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 1966 / Served to 1968

James W. Pless Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

James W. Pless Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1966. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1898–1985
Tenure: 1966–1968 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1966	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Pless authored 87 published opinions for the court (1966–1968), plus 4 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Yancey v. Heafner (42 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. 21 of these were attributed to Pless 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
1966	Yancey v. Heafner	150 S.E.2d 440	42
1967	State v. Aycoth· Dissent†	157 S.E.2d 655	36
1967	Swain v. Tillett· Dissent†	152 S.E.2d 297	32
1966	State v. Bullard	148 S.E.2d 565	32
1967	State v. Butler	153 S.E.2d 477	30
1967	Wilson v. Wilson	153 S.E.2d 349	30
1968	Clark Ex Rel. Clark v. Burton Lines, Inc.	158 S.E.2d 569	29
1967	Phelps v. City of Winston-Salem	157 S.E.2d 719	29
1966	State v. Barber· Dissent†	151 S.E.2d 51	28
1967	Huski-Bilt, Inc. v. First-Citizens Bank & Trust Co.	157 S.E.2d 352	26
1967	Moody v. Transylvania County	156 S.E.2d 716	26
1967	State v. Britt	154 S.E.2d 519	26
1967	Shute v. Fisher	154 S.E.2d 75	25
1967	State v. Jackson	155 S.E.2d 236	24
1966	In Re the Custody of Marlowe	150 S.E.2d 204	23

Showing the 15 most-cited of 92 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 W. Pless Jr. on?: James W. Pless Jr. 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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2 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).