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 1937 / Served to 1956

Maurice Victor Barnhill

Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

Maurice Victor Barnhill was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1937. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1887–1963
Tenure: 1937–1956 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1937	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Education

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Judicial Record

In our data, Barnhill authored 757 published opinions for the court (1937–1956), plus 37 dissents and 25 concurrences. Most cited: Hayes v. . Elon College (186 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. 106 of these were attributed to Barnhill 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
1944	Hayes v. . Elon College	29 S.E.2d 137	186
1954	Hodges v. Carter	80 S.E.2d 144	147
1938	Flake Ex Rel. Flake v. Greensboro News Co.	195 S.E. 55	127
1956	Hayes v. City of Wilmington· Dissent†	91 S.E.2d 673	126
1946	Lee v. . Board of Adjustment	37 S.E.2d 128	92
1939	McGill v. Town of Lumberton· Dissent†	3 S.E.2d 324	91
1954	State v. Phillips	82 S.E.2d 762	85
1938	Teachey v. . Gurley	199 S.E. 83	84
1952	Watson Industries, Inc. v. Shaw	69 S.E.2d 505	79
1952	Britt v. City of Wilmington	73 S.E.2d 289	77
1943	Branham v. Denny Roll & Panel Co.	25 S.E.2d 865	76
1954	Dobias v. White	83 S.E.2d 785	75
1950	Rhodes v. Jones	61 S.E.2d 725	74
1946	Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co. v. Hood	40 S.E.2d 198	73
1946	State v. . Morgan	38 S.E.2d 166	73

Showing the 15 most-cited of 819 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 Maurice Victor Barnhill on?: Maurice Victor Barnhill 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

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

19 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).