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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Oregon Supreme Court / Joined 1969 / Served to 1982

Thomas Tongue

Justice, Oregon Supreme Court

Thomas Tongue was a Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1969. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1912–1994
Tenure: 1969–1982 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1969	Oregon Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Oregon
Yale University
University of Oregon

Judicial Record

In our data, Tongue authored 457 published opinions for the court (1970–1982), plus 55 dissents and 57 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Warner (244 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. 379 of these were attributed to Tongue 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
1978	State v. Warner· Concurrence†	585 P.2d 681	244
1977	State v. Valdez· Dissent†	561 P.2d 1006	229
1977	Brown v. Multnomah County District Court· Concurrence†	570 P.2d 52	214
1981	State v. Clark· Concurrence†	630 P.2d 810	211
1981	Sterling v. Cupp· Concurrence†	625 P.2d 123	206
1981	State v. Kennedy†	624 P.2d 99	196
1981	State v. Quinn· Concurrence†	290 Or. 383	183
1979	McPherson v. Employment Division· Dissent†	591 P.2d 1381	168
1975	Deras v. Myers· Concurrence†	535 P.2d 541	151
1981	State v. Newton· Concurrence†	636 P.2d 393	146
1978	Brown v. Transcon Lines	588 P.2d 1087	145
1978	City of La Grande v. Public Employes Retirement Board· Dissent†	576 P.2d 1204	140
1981	Whipple v. Howser	632 P.2d 782	139
1978	Timberline Equipment Co., Inc. v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Insurance· Concurrence†	576 P.2d 1244	136
1979	State v. Cloutier· Dissent†	596 P.2d 1278	135

Showing the 15 most-cited of 569 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 Thomas Tongue on?: Thomas Tongue 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

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

13 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).