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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1951 / Served to 1955

Ralph O. Olson

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Ralph O. Olson was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1951. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1902–1955
Tenure: 1951–1955 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1951	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Carleton College

Judicial Record

In our data, Olson authored 107 published opinions for the court (1951–1954), plus 15 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: McLeod v. Grant County School District No. 128 (229 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. 42 of these were attributed to Olson 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
1953	McLeod v. Grant County School District No. 128· Dissent†	255 P.2d 360	229
1953	State v. Emmanuel· Dissent†	259 P.2d 845	129
1953	Bowman v. Webster· Dissent†	253 P.2d 934	62
1952	In Re the Discipline of Little	244 P.2d 255	60
1952	Household Finance Corp. v. State· Concurrence†	244 P.2d 260	59
1954	Johnson v. Howard· Dissent†	275 P.2d 736	58
1953	Arnold v. Sanstol	260 P.2d 327	58
1953	State v. Tharp	256 P.2d 482	54
1953	Ward v. Painters' Local Union No. 300	252 P.2d 253	51
1954	State Ex Rel. Mauerman v. SUP'R CT. FOR THURSTON CTY.	271 P.2d 435	44
1953	Shaffer v. Shaffer	262 P.2d 763	42
1952	Washington State Bar Ass'n v. Washington Ass'n of Realtors	251 P.2d 619	39
1952	Anderson v. Dalton· Dissent†	246 P.2d 853	38
1952	State Ex Rel. Holcomb v. Armstrong	239 P.2d 545	37
1953	Gilmartin v. Stevens Investment Co.· Dissent†	261 P.2d 73	35

Showing the 15 most-cited of 130 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 Ralph O. Olson on?: Ralph O. Olson 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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3 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).