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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1962 / Served to 1979

Orris L. Hamilton

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Orris L. Hamilton was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1962. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1914 · age 112
Tenure: 1962–1979 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1962	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Education

American University

Judicial Record

In our data, Hamilton authored 333 published opinions for the court (1962–1979), plus 20 dissents and 25 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Wanrow (308 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. 83 of these were attributed to Hamilton 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
1977	State v. Wanrow· Dissent†	559 P.2d 548	308
1965	Evangelical United Brethren Church v. State†	67 Wash. 2d 246	230
1978	Holland v. Boeing Company	583 P.2d 621	216
1979	State v. Foster	589 P.2d 789	186
1979	Lamon v. McDonnell Douglas Corp.	588 P.2d 1346	177
1968	White v. Holm	438 P.2d 581	176
1963	Balise v. Underwood	381 P.2d 966	170
1973	Diversified Industries Development Corp. v. Ripley	514 P.2d 137	165
1963	Tyee Construction Co. v. Dulien Steel Products, Inc.	381 P.2d 245	153
1974	State v. Gluck	518 P.2d 703	151
1976	Johnson v. Spider Staging Corp.	555 P.2d 997	138
1976	State v. Ralph Williams' North West Chrysler Plymouth, Inc.	553 P.2d 423	135
1964	Calbom v. Knudtzon	396 P.2d 148	134
1964	Lenci v. City of Seattle	388 P.2d 926	133
1974	Leschi Improvement Council v. Washington State Highway Commission· Concurrence†	525 P.2d 774	132

Showing the 15 most-cited of 378 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 Orris L. Hamilton on?: Orris L. Hamilton 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.

17 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).