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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Oregon Supreme Court / Joined 1998 / Served to 2003

Susan M. Leeson

Justice, Oregon Supreme Court

Susan M. Leeson was a Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1998. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1946 · age 80
Tenure: 1998–2003 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1998	Oregon Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Willamette University
Willamette University

Judicial Record

In our data, Leeson authored 54 published opinions for the court (1998–2003), plus 1 dissent and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Smothers v. Gresham Transfer, Inc. (156 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. 37 of these were attributed to Leeson 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
2001	Smothers v. Gresham Transfer, Inc.†	23 P.3d 333	156
1998	State v. Hall†	966 P.2d 208	123
2000	Hamel v. Johnson†	998 P.2d 661	63
2001	Gorham v. Thompson†	34 P.3d 161	55
1998	State v. Hayward†	963 P.2d 667	50
2000	Norden v. STATE, WATER RESOURCES DEPT.†	996 P.2d 958	44
2000	Koskela v. Willamette Industries, Inc.	15 P.3d 548	43
2000	State v. Harberts†	11 P.3d 641	43
1999	Shasta View Irrigation District v. Amoco Chemicals Corp.†	986 P.2d 536	42
2001	Mulier v. Johnson†	29 P.3d 1104	36
2002	Flavorland Foods v. Washington County Assessor	54 P.3d 582	35
1998	Reesman v. Highfill†	965 P.2d 1030	34
2002	Vokoun v. City of Lake Oswego	56 P.3d 396	32
1999	First Commerce of America, Inc. v. Nimbus Center Associates†	986 P.2d 556	31
2002	State v. Compton	39 P.3d 833	28

Showing the 15 most-cited of 58 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 Oregon Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Susan M. Leeson on?: Susan M. Leeson was a Justice of the Oregon 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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5 years on the Oregon Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).