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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1968 / Served to 1971

Walter Thomas McGovern

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

Walter Thomas McGovern was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1968. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1922 · age 104
Tenure: 1968–1971 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1968	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, McGovern authored 17 published opinions for the court (1968–1971), plus 6 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Wells v. City of Vancouver (61 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. 24 of these were attributed to McGovern 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
1970	Wells v. City of Vancouver†	467 P.2d 292	61
1969	State v. Parnell· Dissent†	463 P.2d 134	60
1970	Honore v. Washington State Board of Prison Terms & Paroles· Concurrence†	466 P.2d 485	45
1971	State ex rel. Superior Court of Snohomish County v. Sperry†	79 Wash. 2d 69	41
1970	Myers v. Kitsap Physicians Service†	474 P.2d 109	40
1971	Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone Co. v. Department of Revenue†	481 P.2d 556	23
1970	Paget v. Logan· Dissent†	474 P.2d 247	23
1969	State v. Tetzlaff†	453 P.2d 638	22
1970	Tsapralis v. Public Employees Mutual Casualty Co.· Dissent†	77 Wash. 2d 581	17
1969	Hamilton v. Department of Labor & Industries· Dissent†	462 P.2d 917	17
1968	Thiry v. Atlantic Monthly Co.†	445 P.2d 1012	17
1969	State v. Valpredo†	450 P.2d 979	15
1971	State v. Rabe†	484 P.2d 917	14
1970	Johnson v. Marshall Field & Co.†	478 P.2d 735	14
1970	Cresap v. Pacific Inland Navigation Co.†	478 P.2d 223	11

Showing the 15 most-cited of 24 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 Thomas McGovern on?: Walter Thomas McGovern 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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3 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).