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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Oregon Supreme Court / Joined 1998 / Served to 2006

R. William Riggs

Justice, Oregon Supreme Court

R. William Riggs was a Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1998. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1939 · age 87
Tenure: 1998–2006 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1998	Oregon Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Portland State University
University of Oregon

Judicial Record

In our data, Riggs authored 36 published opinions for the court (1999–2006), plus 3 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Outdoor Media Dimensions Inc. v. State (428 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. 38 of these were attributed to Riggs 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
2001	Outdoor Media Dimensions Inc. v. State†	20 P.3d 180	428
1999	State v. Barone†	986 P.2d 5	107
2005	State ex rel. Department of Human Services v. Smith· Dissent†	338 Or. 58	67
2000	State v. Tucker†	997 P.2d 182	61
2000	Preble v. Department of Revenue†	14 P.3d 613	59
2006	State v. Thompkin†	143 P.3d 530	54
2005	Burdge v. Palmateer†	112 P.3d 320	42
1999	State v. Goodman†	975 P.2d 458	42
2002	Minnis v. Oregon Mutual Insurance· Concurrence†	48 P.3d 137	36
2002	State v. Barnum†	39 P.3d 178	35
2004	State v. Meredith†	96 P.3d 342	33
1999	Ken Leahy Construction, Inc. v. Cascade General, Inc.†	994 P.2d 112	31
2004	Novick/Crew v. Myers· Concurrence†	100 P.3d 1064	30
2004	State v. Guzek†	86 P.3d 1106	30
2004	Day v. Advanced M & D Sales, Inc.	86 P.3d 678	25

Showing the 15 most-cited of 46 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 Oregon Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was R. William Riggs on?: R. William Riggs was a Justice of the Oregon 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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8 years on the Oregon Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).