How do judges of the Supreme Court of North Carolina reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of North Carolina / Joined 1954 / Served to 1974

William H. Bobbitt

Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

William H. Bobbitt was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1954. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1900–1992
Tenure: 1954–1974 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1954	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Education

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Judicial Record

In our data, Bobbitt authored 708 published opinions for the court (1954–1974), plus 52 dissents and 41 concurrences. Most cited: Wachovia Bank & Trust Co. v. Westchester Fire Insurance (292 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. 186 of these were attributed to Bobbitt 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	Wachovia Bank & Trust Co. v. Westchester Fire Insurance· Dissent†	172 S.E.2d 518	292
1971	Kelly v. International Harvester Company	179 S.E.2d 396	210
1971	State v. Williams	185 S.E.2d 174	195
1969	State v. Atkinson· Dissent†	167 S.E.2d 241	191
1954	State v. Marshall Norman Hicks	84 S.E.2d 545	182
1968	Knutton v. Cofield· Dissent†	160 S.E.2d 29	153
1970	State v. Sparrow· Dissent†	173 S.E.2d 897	152
1973	State v. Waddell· Concurrence†	194 S.E.2d 19	142
1974	State v. Jarrette· Dissent†	202 S.E.2d 721	134
1972	State Ex Rel. Utilities Commission v. General Telephone Co. of the Southeast· Concurrence†	189 S.E.2d 705	112
1972	State v. Thompson	185 S.E.2d 666	112
1969	State v. Mercer	165 S.E.2d 328	108
1969	State v. Williams	165 S.E.2d 481	106
1957	Shearin v. Lloyd	98 S.E.2d 508	104
1968	State v. Propst	161 S.E.2d 560	102

Showing the 15 most-cited of 801 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 Supreme Court of North Carolina reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was William H. Bobbitt on?: William H. Bobbitt was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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20 years on the Supreme Court of North Carolina. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).