How do judges of the Supreme Court of North Carolina reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of North Carolina / Joined 1993 / Former Justice

Sarah E. Parker

Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

Sarah E. Parker was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1993. She previously served on the Court of Appeals of North Carolina. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1942 · age 84
Tenure: 1993 · 33 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1984	Court of Appeals of North Carolina	–	–
1993	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Education

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Judicial Record

In our data, Parker authored 437 published opinions for the court (1985–2014), plus 24 dissents and 16 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Fritsch (482 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. 141 of these were attributed to Parker 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
2000	State v. Fritsch	526 S.E.2d 451	482
2004	Howerton v. Arai Helmet, Ltd.· Concurrence†	597 S.E.2d 674	299
2011	State v. Biber	712 S.E.2d 874	268
1997	State v. Gaines	483 S.E.2d 396	268
2000	State v. Braxton	531 S.E.2d 428	202
2002	DeWitt v. Eveready Battery Co., Inc.· Concurrence†	565 S.E.2d 140	177
1994	Petersen v. Rogers	445 S.E.2d 901	168
2004	State v. Roache	595 S.E.2d 381	166
2005	State v. Campbell	617 S.E.2d 1	152
2001	Lenox, Inc. v. Tolson· Dissent†	548 S.E.2d 513	150
1998	State v. Trull	509 S.E.2d 178	148
1993	State v. Gibbs	436 S.E.2d 321	140
2000	State v. Grooms	540 S.E.2d 713	138
1995	State v. White	457 S.E.2d 841	130
2000	State v. Lawrence	530 S.E.2d 807	129

Showing the 15 most-cited of 477 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 Supreme Court of North Carolina reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Sarah E. Parker on?: Sarah E. Parker was a Justice of the Supreme Court 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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33 years on the Supreme Court of North Carolina. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).