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 2005 / Active

Paul Martin Newby

Chief Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

Paul Martin Newby is a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, serving since 2005. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1955 · age 71
Tenure: Since 2005 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2005	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Education

Duke University
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Judicial Record

In our data, Newby authored 106 published opinions for the court (2005–2026), plus 30 dissents and 13 concurrences. Most cited: In re T.R.P. (219 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. 102 of these were attributed to Newby 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
2006	In re T.R.P.· Dissent†	360 N.C. 588	219
2013	Bumpers v. Cmty. Bank of N. Va.†	367 N.C. 81	166
2017	Christenbury Eye Ctr., P.A. v. Medflow, Inc.†	802 S.E.2d 888	134
2007	Harris v. Matthews	643 S.E.2d 566	116
2019	In re Z.L.W.†	831 S.E.2d 62	114
2014	Dallaire v. Bank of America, N.A.†	367 N.C. 363	112
2008	State v. Styles	665 S.E.2d 438	112
2013	In re L.M.T.†	367 N.C. 165	108
2010	Harleysville Mutual Insurance v. Buzz Off Insect Shield, L.L.C.	692 S.E.2d 605	101
2005	State v. Beck	614 S.E.2d 274	101
2010	White v. Thompson	691 S.E.2d 676	98
2008	State v. Barnard	658 S.E.2d 643	93
2006	Stein v. Asheville City Board of Education	626 S.E.2d 263	92
2008	Tillman v. Commercial Credit Loans, Inc.· Dissent†	655 S.E.2d 362	91
2009	State v. Philip Morris USA Inc.	685 S.E.2d 85	88

Showing the 15 most-cited of 149 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 is Paul Martin Newby on?: Paul Martin Newby is a Chief 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

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21 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).