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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 2003 / Former Justice

Mary E. Fairhurst

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Mary E. Fairhurst was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2003. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1957 · age 69
Tenure: 2003 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2003	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Gonzaga University
Gonzaga University

Judicial Record

In our data, Fairhurst authored 1,025 published opinions for the court (2003–2019), plus 50 dissents and 42 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Emery (1,088 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. 993 of these were attributed to Fairhurst 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. Emery	278 P.3d 653	1,088
2009	State v. O'Hara†	167 Wash. 2d 91	697
2015	State v. Blazina· Concurrence†	182 Wash. 2d 827	560
2009	State v. Sutherby· Concurrence†	165 Wash. 2d 870	482
2003	Sunnyside Valley Irrigation District v. Dickie†	149 Wash. 2d 873	459
2009	State v. Fisher	202 P.3d 937	392
2009	State v. Fisher†	165 Wash. 2d 727	391
2005	State v. Jacobs†	154 Wash. 2d 596	385
2006	State v. Levy†	156 Wash. 2d 709	366
2006	State v. Levy	132 P.3d 1076	363
2005	State v. Hughes	110 P.3d 192	352
2006	State v. Weber†	159 Wash. 2d 252	328
2006	State v. Weber	149 P.3d 646	324
2005	State v. Hughes†	154 Wash. 2d 118	316
2010	Lake v. Woodcreek Homeowners Ass'n†	169 Wash. 2d 516	297

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,117 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 Mary E. Fairhurst on?: Mary E. Fairhurst 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).