How do judges of the Court of Appeals of North Carolina reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Court of Appeals of North Carolina / Joined 1991 / Served to 2002

Ralph A. Walker

Judge, Court of Appeals of North Carolina

Ralph A. Walker was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1991. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1991–2002 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1991	Court of Appeals of North Carolina	–	–

Education

Wake Forest University
Wake Forest University

Judicial Record

In our data, Walker authored 371 published opinions for the court (1991–2002), plus 31 dissents and 44 concurrences. Most cited: Franklin v. Broyhill Furniture Industries (147 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. 188 of these were attributed to Walker 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	Franklin v. Broyhill Furniture Industries· Concurrence†	472 S.E.2d 382	147
1995	North Carolina Department of Transportation v. Page	460 S.E.2d 332	138
2001	Combs & Associates, Inc. v. Kennedy	555 S.E.2d 634	75
2000	Eastover Ridge, L.L.C v. Metric Constructors, Inc.	533 S.E.2d 827	61
1995	James v. Clark	454 S.E.2d 826	61
2002	State Properties, LLC v. Ray	574 S.E.2d 180	60
2000	Turner v. Norfolk Southern Corp.	526 S.E.2d 666	60
1996	Moore v. Evans· Concurrence†	476 S.E.2d 415	60
2000	North Carolina Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance v. Mizell	530 S.E.2d 93	57
1992	Routh v. Snap-On Tools Corp.	423 S.E.2d 791	56
2001	State v. Grover· Dissent†	543 S.E.2d 179	50
1998	Simmons v. North Carolina Department of Transportation	496 S.E.2d 790	49
1993	Lovell v. Nationwide Mutual Insurance· Dissent†	424 S.E.2d 181	49
2001	Creek Pointe Homeowner's Ass'n v. Happ· Concurrence†	552 S.E.2d 220	48
1995	Northington v. Michelotti	464 S.E.2d 711	46

Showing the 15 most-cited of 446 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 Court of Appeals of North Carolina reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Ralph A. Walker on?: Ralph A. Walker was a Judge of the Court of Appeals 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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11 years on the Court of Appeals of North Carolina. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).