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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1967 / Served to 1971

Morell Edward Sharp

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Morell Edward Sharp was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1967. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1920–1980
Tenure: 1967–1971 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1967	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Oregon
Northwestern University

Judicial Record

In our data, Sharp authored 5 published opinions for the court (1970–1971), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Estill v. Sisters of Charity (71 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. 6 of these were attributed to Sharp 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
1970	Estill v. Sisters of Charity· Dissent†	479 P.2d 1	71
1971	State v. Stiltner†	491 P.2d 1043	64
1971	Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone Co. v. Port of Seattle†	491 P.2d 1037	26
1971	Public Utility District No. 1 v. Taxpayers†	479 P.2d 61	19
1971	West American Insurance v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance†	80 Wash. 2d 38	8
1970	State ex rel. Don Williams Export, Inc. v. Timm†	78 Wash. 2d 520	3

Showing the 6 most-cited of 6 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 Morell Edward Sharp on?: Morell Edward Sharp 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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4 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).