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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1995 / Served to 2001

Philip A. Talmadge

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Philip A. Talmadge was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1995. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1952 · age 74
Tenure: 1995–2001 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1995	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Yale University

Judicial Record

In our data, Talmadge authored 160 published opinions for the court (1995–2007), plus 65 dissents and 67 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Hendrickson (744 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. 207 of these were attributed to Talmadge 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
1996	State v. Hendrickson†	129 Wash. 2d 61	744
1996	State v. Hendrickson	917 P.2d 563	735
1999	State v. Finch· Dissent†	137 Wash. 2d 792	412
1999	State v. Ford· Dissent†	137 Wash. 2d 472	399
1998	Mahler v. Szucs	957 P.2d 632	384
1998	Mahler v. Szucs†	135 Wash. 2d 398	381
2001	Cockle v. Department of Labor & Industries· Dissent†	142 Wash. 2d 801	343
1998	Smith v. Stillwell-Smith· Concurrence†	137 Wash. 2d 1	313
1999	State v. Mendez†	137 Wash. 2d 208	310
1999	Hertog v. City of Seattle· Concurrence†	138 Wash. 2d 265	309
1999	State v. Mendez	970 P.2d 722	297
1997	State v. Broadaway· Concurrence†	133 Wash. 2d 118	290
1996	State v. Copeland· Concurrence†	130 Wash. 2d 244	279
1998	City of Redmond v. Central Puget Sound Growth Management Hearings Board†	136 Wash. 2d 38	277
1998	State v. Hickman· Dissent†	135 Wash. 2d 97	276

Showing the 15 most-cited of 292 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 Philip A. Talmadge on?: Philip A. Talmadge 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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6 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).