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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Oregon Supreme Court / Joined 2006 / Active

Martha Lee Walters

Justice, Oregon Supreme Court

Martha Lee Walters is a Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, serving since 2006. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1950 · age 76
Tenure: Since 2006 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2006	Oregon Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Oregon

Judicial Record

In our data, Walters authored 129 published opinions for the court (2007–2023), plus 25 dissents and 12 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Chitwood (196 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. 117 of these were attributed to Walters 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
2022	State v. Chitwood	370 Or. 305	196
2010	State v. Ashbaugh· Dissent†	244 P.3d 360	161
2015	State v. Williams†	357 Or. 1	115
2014	State v. Unger· Dissent†	356 Or. 59	113
2013	State v. Backstrand· Concurrence†	354 Or. 392	103
2015	State v. Clemente-Perez· Dissent†	357 Or. 745	96
2017	State v. Baughman†	361 Or. 386	91
2014	Two Two v. Fujitec America, Inc.†	355 Or. 319	85
2016	Horton v. Oregon Health & Science University· Dissent†	359 Or. 168	82
2015	Pereida-Alba v. Coursey· Concurrence†	356 Or. 654	82
2008	State v. Davis· Concurrence†	201 P.3d 185	82
2010	State v. Vondehn	236 P.3d 691	80
2016	State v. Ramos†	358 Or. 581	74
2013	State v. Watson†	353 Or. 768	71
2007	State v. Birchfield†	157 P.3d 216	69

Showing the 15 most-cited of 166 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 Oregon Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court is Martha Lee Walters on?: Martha Lee Walters is a Justice of the Oregon 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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19 years on the Oregon Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).