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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Oregon Supreme Court / Joined 1986 / Served to 2010

W. Michael Gillette

Justice, Oregon Supreme Court

W. Michael Gillette was a Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1986. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1941 · age 85
Tenure: 1986–2010 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1986	Oregon Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Whitman College
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Gillette authored 454 published opinions for the court (1986–2010), plus 27 dissents and 39 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Owens (434 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. 310 of these were attributed to Gillette 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
1986	State v. Owens· Concurrence†	729 P.2d 524	434
1990	Reed v. Department of Revenue†	798 P.2d 235	360
1991	State v. Balfour	814 P.2d 1069	333
1992	Hoffman Construction Co. of Alaska v. Fred S. James & Co.†	836 P.2d 703	262
1987	State v. Bates	747 P.2d 991	243
2007	State v. Fults	173 P.3d 822	218
1993	Stevens v. Bispham	851 P.2d 556	198
2010	State v. Rodgers· Concurrence†	227 P.3d 695	194
1987	State v. Tanner· Concurrence†	745 P.2d 757	194
1992	Priest v. Pearce	840 P.2d 65	177
1990	State v. Montez· Dissent†	789 P.2d 1352	170
2010	State v. Ashbaugh	244 P.3d 360	161
2007	State v. Ramirez†	173 P.3d 817	157
1988	State v. Spencer	750 P.2d 147	145
2001	State Ex Rel. State Office for Services to Children & Families v. Stillman†	36 P.3d 490	142

Showing the 15 most-cited of 520 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 W. Michael Gillette on?: W. Michael Gillette 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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24 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).