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 1985 / Served to 1986

Rhoda Billings

Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

Rhoda Billings was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1985. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1937 · age 89
Tenure: 1985–1986 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1985	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Education

Wake Forest University

Judicial Record

In our data, Billings authored 34 published opinions for the court (1985–1986), plus 4 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: Thomas M. McInnis & Associates, Inc. v. Hall (245 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. 16 of these were attributed to Billings 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
1986	Thomas M. McInnis & Associates, Inc. v. Hall· Concurrence†	349 S.E.2d 552	245
1986	State Capital Insurance v. Nationwide Mutual Insurance· Dissent†	350 S.E.2d 66	150
1985	State v. Parker	337 S.E.2d 487	115
1986	Whitley v. Columbia Lumber Mfg. Co.· Dissent†	348 S.E.2d 336	93
1986	State v. Aguallo· Dissent†	350 S.E.2d 76	92
1986	State v. Williams· Concurrence†	346 S.E.2d 405	91
1986	Sharpe v. Park Newspapers of Lumberton, Inc.	347 S.E.2d 25	79
1986	State v. Moore	340 S.E.2d 401	72
1986	Smith v. Price	340 S.E.2d 408	71
1986	Derebery v. Pitt County Fire Marshall· Concurrence†	347 S.E.2d 814	64
1986	State v. Welch· Concurrence†	342 S.E.2d 789	63
1986	State v. Lowery	347 S.E.2d 729	58
1986	State v. Weaver	348 S.E.2d 791	52
1985	State v. Fearing· Concurrence†	337 S.E.2d 551	50
1986	State v. Paige	343 S.E.2d 848	45

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 Supreme Court of North Carolina reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Rhoda Billings on?: Rhoda Billings was a 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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1 year 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).