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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1982 / Served to 1989

Vernon Robert Pearson

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Vernon Robert Pearson was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1982. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1923–2013
Tenure: 1982–1989 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1982	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Pearson authored 133 published opinions for the court (1982–2002), plus 21 dissents and 15 concurrences. Most cited: Haberman v. Washington Public Power Supply System (400 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. 43 of these were attributed to Pearson 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
1988	Haberman v. Washington Public Power Supply System· Dissent†	750 P.2d 254	400
1983	Bowers v. Transamerica Title Insurance	675 P.2d 193	369
1984	State v. Campbell· Concurrence†	691 P.2d 929	303
1986	State v. Smith	725 P.2d 951	277
1986	Bering v. Share	721 P.2d 918	256
1988	State v. Belgarde	755 P.2d 174	246
1982	State v. Saltarelli	655 P.2d 697	227
1984	State v. Bartholomew	683 P.2d 1079	200
1983	Harbeson v. Parke-Davis, Inc.	656 P.2d 483	197
1987	Herron v. Tribune Publishing Co.	736 P.2d 249	195
1984	Pedroza v. Bryant	677 P.2d 166	194
1986	In Re Rosier	717 P.2d 1353	191
1983	Herskovits v. Group Health Cooperative· Concurrence†	664 P.2d 474	186
1987	State v. Rupe· Dissent†	743 P.2d 210	177
1987	State v. Fisher· Dissent†	739 P.2d 683	172

Showing the 15 most-cited of 169 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 Vernon Robert Pearson on?: Vernon Robert Pearson 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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7 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).