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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1989 / Served to 2001

Richard P. Guy

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Richard P. Guy was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1989. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1932 · age 94
Tenure: 1989–2001 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1989	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Gonzaga University

Judicial Record

In our data, Guy authored 219 published opinions for the court (1990–2001), plus 17 dissents and 25 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Stenson (921 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. 116 of these were attributed to Guy 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
1997	State v. Stenson	940 P.2d 1239	921
1997	State v. Stenson†	132 Wash. 2d 668	920
1997	In re the Marriage of Littlefield†	133 Wash. 2d 39	684
1997	In Re Marriage of Littlefield	940 P.2d 1362	670
1996	State v. Thorne†	129 Wash. 2d 736	352
1993	State v. Riley	846 P.2d 1365	350
2001	Cockle v. Department of Labor & Industries· Concurrence†	142 Wash. 2d 801	343
1995	Queen City Farms, Inc. v. Central Nat'l Ins. Co. of Omaha· Dissent†	882 P.2d 703	306
1994	State v. Ward	870 P.2d 295	303
1993	State v. Benn	845 P.2d 289	303
1992	Taggart v. State· Concurrence†	822 P.2d 243	279
1997	Leingang v. PIERCE CO. MED. BUREAU, INC.	930 P.2d 288	276
2000	Wenatchee Sportsmen Ass'n v. Chelan County†	141 Wash. 2d 169	267
1997	Leingang v. Pierce County Medical Bureau, Inc.†	131 Wash. 2d 133	266
1993	State v. Blackwell	845 P.2d 1017	260

Showing the 15 most-cited of 261 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 Richard P. Guy on?: Richard P. Guy 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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12 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).