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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1928 / Served to 1951

Walter Burges Beals

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Walter Burges Beals was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1928. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1876–1960
Tenure: 1928–1951 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1928	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Beals authored 887 published opinions for the court (1928–1951), plus 173 dissents and 54 concurrences. Most cited: Blanchard v. Golden Age Brewing Co. (129 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. 41 of these were attributed to Beals 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
1936	Blanchard v. Golden Age Brewing Co.· Dissent	63 P.2d 397	129
1943	Chandler v. Washington Toll Bridge Authority	137 P.2d 97	128
1937	Occidental Life Insurance v. Powers· Dissent	74 P.2d 27	74
1951	Power, Inc. v. Huntley· Concurrence†	235 P.2d 173	73
1948	Creasman v. Boyle· Dissent	196 P.2d 835	66
1940	State v. Davis	108 P.2d 641	63
1943	State Ex Rel. Pac. T. T. Co. v. D.P.S.	142 P.2d 498	60
1942	Morgan v. Department of Social Security	127 P.2d 686	53
1944	Luellen v. City of Aberdeen· Dissent	148 P.2d 849	52
1937	In Re Day	65 P.2d 1049	48
1943	State ex rel. Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co. v. Department of Public Service†	19 Wash. 2d 200	46
1930	Aberdeen Savings & Loan Ass'n v. Chase	290 P. 697	46
1949	Ehman v. Department of Labor & Industries	206 P.2d 787	45
1947	Gazzam v. Building Service Employees International Union, Local 262· Dissent	188 P.2d 97	44
1941	In Re the Dissolution & Disorganization of Horse Heaven Irrigation District· Dissent	118 P.2d 972	44

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,115 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 Walter Burges Beals on?: Walter Burges Beals was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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23 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).