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 1999 / Former Justice

Mark D. Martin

Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

Mark D. Martin was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1999. He previously served on the Court of Appeals of North Carolina. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1963 · age 63
Tenure: 1999 · 27 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1994	Court of Appeals of North Carolina	–	–
1999	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Education

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Western Carolina University

Judicial Record

In our data, Martin authored 187 published opinions for the court (1999–2018), plus 17 dissents and 14 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Lawrence (702 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. 128 of these were attributed to Martin 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
2012	State v. Lawrence	723 S.E.2d 326	702
2007	Forbis v. Neal	649 S.E.2d 382	524
2000	State v. Fritsch· Concurrence†	526 S.E.2d 451	482
2008	Dogwood Development & Management Co. LLC v. White Oak Transport Co.	657 S.E.2d 361	395
2001	State v. Fair	557 S.E.2d 500	280
2004	Whitacre Partnership v. Biosignia, Inc.	591 S.E.2d 870	271
2002	Wood v. Guilford County	558 S.E.2d 490	242
2004	North Carolina Department of Environment & Natural Resources v. Carroll	599 S.E.2d 888	227
1999	Sharpe v. Worland	522 S.E.2d 577	216
2018	Corwin as Trustee for Beatrice Corwin Living Irrevocable Trust v. British American Tobacco PLC†	821 S.E.2d 729	201
2013	Green v. Freeman†	367 N.C. 136	163
2002	State v. Wiley	565 S.E.2d 22	162
2005	State v. Allen· Concurrence†	615 S.E.2d 256	161
1999	Isenhour v. Hutto	517 S.E.2d 121	144
2001	Adams v. Tessener	550 S.E.2d 499	140

Showing the 15 most-cited of 218 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 Mark D. Martin on?: Mark D. Martin 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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27 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).