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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 2001 / Former Justice

Susan Owens

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Susan Owens was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2001. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1949 · age 77
Tenure: 2001 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2001	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Duke University

Judicial Record

In our data, Owens authored 382 published opinions for the court (2001–2019), plus 43 dissents and 6 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. 282 of these were attributed to Owens 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.· Dissent†	146 Wash. 2d 1	1,615
2003	State v. J.P.†	149 Wash. 2d 444	558
2014	State v. Homan· Dissent†	181 Wash. 2d 102	444
2003	State v. Rohrich†	149 Wash. 2d 647	387
2012	State v. Gresham†	173 Wash. 2d 405	378
2003	State v. Rohrich	71 P.3d 638	372
2004	In re the Personal Restraint of Orange†	152 Wash. 2d 795	360
2010	State v. Jones†	168 Wash. 2d 713	330
2010	State v. Jones	230 P.3d 576	322
2006	State v. McKenzie†	157 Wash. 2d 44	321
2013	In re the Personal Restraint of Yates†	177 Wash. 2d 1	316
2006	Mayer v. Sto Industries, Inc.†	156 Wash. 2d 677	291
2006	Mayer v. Sto Industries, Inc.	132 P.3d 115	288
2001	State v. Demery	30 P.3d 1278	270
2001	State v. Demery†	144 Wash. 2d 753	264

Showing the 15 most-cited of 431 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 Susan Owens on?: Susan Owens 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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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).