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 / Served to 2012

Tom Chambers

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

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

Lived: 1943–2013
Tenure: 2001–2012 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2001	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Washington State University

Judicial Record

In our data, Chambers authored 296 published opinions for the court (2001–2012), plus 64 dissents and 112 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Emery (1,088 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. 324 of these were attributed to Chambers 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
2012	State v. Emery· Concurrence†	278 P.3d 653	1,088
2004	State v. Thomas· Concurrence†	150 Wash. 2d 821	973
2007	State v. Kirkman· Concurrence†	159 Wash. 2d 918	747
2011	State v. Thorgerson· Dissent†	258 P.3d 43	702
2004	In re the Personal Restraint of Davis· Concurrence†	152 Wash. 2d 647	682
2008	State v. Warren†	165 Wash. 2d 17	511
2008	State v. Warren	195 P.3d 940	510
2012	In re the Personal Restraint of Glasmann· Concurrence†	175 Wash. 2d 696	436
2003	State v. O'Neill· Concurrence†	148 Wash. 2d 564	427
2005	Hearst Communications v. Seattle Times Co.	115 P.3d 262	387
2005	Hearst Communications, Inc. v. Seattle Times Co.†	154 Wash. 2d 493	368
2002	State v. Darden· Concurrence†	145 Wash. 2d 612	345
2011	State v. Monday	257 P.3d 551	317
2011	State v. Monday†	171 Wash. 2d 667	317
2003	State v. Dhaliwal· Concurrence†	150 Wash. 2d 559	297

Showing the 15 most-cited of 472 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 Tom Chambers on?: Tom Chambers 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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11 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).