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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1996 / Served to 2011

Richard B. Sanders

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Richard B. Sanders was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1996. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1996–2011 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1996	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Sanders authored 309 published opinions for the court (1996–2011), plus 349 dissents and 106 concurrences. Most cited: Department of Ecology v. Campbell & Gwinn, L.L.C. (1,615 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. 607 of these were attributed to Sanders 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
2002	Department of Ecology v. Campbell & Gwinn, L.L.C.· Concurrence†	146 Wash. 2d 1	1,615
1997	State v. Stenson· Dissent†	132 Wash. 2d 668	920
2007	State v. Kirkman· Dissent†	159 Wash. 2d 918	747
2009	State v. O'Hara· Dissent†	167 Wash. 2d 91	697
1997	In re the Marriage of Littlefield· Concurrence†	133 Wash. 2d 39	684
2004	In re the Personal Restraint of Davis· Concurrence†	152 Wash. 2d 647	682
2008	State v. Warren· Dissent†	165 Wash. 2d 17	511
2008	State v. Bahl· Concurrence†	164 Wash. 2d 739	423
1999	State v. Ladson	979 P.2d 833	415
1999	State v. Finch· Concurrence†	137 Wash. 2d 792	412
1999	State v. Ladson†	138 Wash. 2d 343	406
2006	State v. Gregory· Concurrence†	158 Wash. 2d 759	392
2005	State v. Jacobs· Concurrence†	154 Wash. 2d 596	385
2006	State v. Levy· Concurrence†	156 Wash. 2d 709	366
1996	State v. Thorne· Dissent†	129 Wash. 2d 736	352

Showing the 15 most-cited of 764 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 B. Sanders on?: Richard B. Sanders 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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15 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).