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 1977 / Served to 1980

Richard Cannon Erwin

Judge, Court of Appeals of North Carolina

Richard Cannon Erwin was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1923–2006
Tenure: 1977–1980 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	Court of Appeals of North Carolina	–	–

Education

Howard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Erwin authored 79 published opinions for the court (1978–1980), plus 4 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Town of Bladenboro v. McKeithan (12 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. 85 of these were attributed to Erwin 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
1980	Town of Bladenboro v. McKeithan†	261 S.E.2d 260	12
1978	In Re the Right to Practice Law of Dale†	247 S.E.2d 246	12
1979	Heritage Village Church & Missionary Fellowship, Inc. v. State†	253 S.E.2d 473	10
1979	Lackey v. Cook· Concurrence†	253 S.E.2d 335	10
1980	Hoffman v. Edwards†	48 N.C. App. 559	9
1979	Hassell v. Means†	257 S.E.2d 123	9
1979	Dixon v. Weaver†	41 N.C. App. 524	9
1980	Hansel v. Sherman Textiles†	270 S.E.2d 585	6
1978	State v. Thompson· Dissent†	246 S.E.2d 827	5
1979	Williams v. Williams· Dissent†	256 S.E.2d 401	4
1979	In re Hardy†	39 N.C. App. 610	4
1980	State v. Wade†	49 N.C. App. 257	3
1980	State v. Judge†	49 N.C. App. 290	3
1980	Clark v. Clark· Dissent†	44 N.C. App. 649	3
1979	Benfield v. First Federal Savings & Loan Ass'n of Catawba County†	44 N.C. App. 371	3

Showing the 15 most-cited of 85 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 Richard Cannon Erwin on?: Richard Cannon Erwin 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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3 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).