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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1947 / Served to 1969

Matthew W. Hill

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Matthew W. Hill was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1947. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1894–1989
Tenure: 1947–1969 · 22 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1947	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Hill authored 632 published opinions for the court (1947–1970), plus 110 dissents and 94 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Goebel (183 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. 253 of these were attributed to Hill 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
1950	State v. Goebel	218 P.2d 300	183
1949	Gruen v. State Tax Commission· Dissent	211 P.2d 651	166
1969	Smith v. Skagit County· Dissent†	453 P.2d 832	164
1956	Bakenhus v. City of Seattle· Dissent†	296 P.2d 536	157
1956	In RE OLSEN v. Delmore· Dissent†	295 P.2d 324	146
1968	Markham Advertising Co. v. State· Dissent†	439 P.2d 248	141
1962	State v. White· Concurrence†	374 P.2d 942	141
1956	State v. Case	298 P.2d 500	140
1963	State Ex Rel. Washington State Finance Committee v. Martin· Concurrence†	384 P.2d 833	138
1962	State v. Michaels· Dissent†	374 P.2d 989	138
1952	State v. Goebel· Concurrence†	240 P.2d 251	128
1960	Preston v. Duncan	349 P.2d 605	113
1953	Pierce v. Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital Ass'n· Dissent†	260 P.2d 765	113
1960	Clark v. Dwyer· Dissent†	353 P.2d 941	111
1968	Douglas v. Bussabarger· Concurrence†	438 P.2d 829	109

Showing the 15 most-cited of 836 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 Matthew W. Hill on?: Matthew W. Hill 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

22 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).