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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1971 / Served to 1995

Robert F. Utter

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Robert F. Utter was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1971. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1930 · age 96
Tenure: 1971–1995 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1971	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Utter authored 434 published opinions for the court (1972–2009), plus 146 dissents and 125 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Salinas (1,796 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. 297 of these were attributed to Utter 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
1992	State v. Salinas· Concurrence†	829 P.2d 1068	1,796
1980	State v. Green· Concurrence†	616 P.2d 628	1,403
1982	Wilson v. Steinbach· Concurrence†	656 P.2d 1030	937
1989	Young v. Key Pharmaceuticals, Inc.	770 P.2d 182	914
1994	State v. Russell· Concurrence†	882 P.2d 747	831
1990	State v. Camarillo· Concurrence†	794 P.2d 850	730
1988	State v. Scott· Concurrence†	757 P.2d 492	576
1991	State v. Kjorsvik· Dissent†	812 P.2d 86	539
2004	State v. Kitchen	756 P.2d 105	499
1995	State v. Gentry· Dissent†	888 P.2d 1105	498
1993	Tapper v. Employment Security Department	858 P.2d 494	461
1991	State v. Hoffman· Dissent†	804 P.2d 577	461
1992	State v. Lord· Dissent†	822 P.2d 177	447
1995	State v. Brett· Dissent†	892 P.2d 29	373
1994	Matter of Personal Restraint of Lord· Dissent†	868 P.2d 835	352

Showing the 15 most-cited of 705 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 Robert F. Utter on?: Robert F. Utter 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

24 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).