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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1995 / Served to 1996

Rosselle Pekelis

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Rosselle Pekelis was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1995. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1938 · age 88
Tenure: 1995–1996 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1995	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Stephens College

Judicial Record

In our data, Pekelis authored 16 published opinions for the court (1995–1996), plus 4 concurrences. Most cited: Sherman v. State (143 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. 11 of these were attributed to Pekelis 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
1995	Sherman v. State†	128 Wash. 2d 164	143
1996	City of Seattle v. Fontanilla· Concurrence†	909 P.2d 1294	134
1995	Sherman v. State	905 P.2d 355	134
1996	State v. Thorn†	129 Wash. 2d 347	117
1995	Heinmiller v. Department of Health· Concurrence†	127 Wash. 2d 595	101
1996	State v. Deal· Concurrence†	911 P.2d 996	92
1996	State v. Thomas	910 P.2d 475	90
1996	State v. Thomas†	128 Wash. 2d 553	88
1995	State v. Brown	903 P.2d 459	77
1995	State v. Brown†	127 Wash. 2d 749	77
1996	State v. Carson· Concurrence†	128 Wash. 2d 805	74
1996	Organization to Preserve Agricultural Lands v. Adams County†	128 Wash. 2d 869	63
1996	Philadelphia II v. Gregoire†	128 Wash. 2d 707	60
1995	Mid-Century Insurance v. Henault	905 P.2d 379	50
1996	State v. Cardenas†	129 Wash. 2d 1	49

Showing the 15 most-cited of 20 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 Rosselle Pekelis on?: Rosselle Pekelis 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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1 year 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).