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 1935 / Served to 1954

William A. Devin

Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

William A. Devin was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1935. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1871–1959
Tenure: 1935–1954 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1935	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Education

Wake Forest University
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Judicial Record

In our data, Devin authored 868 published opinions for the court (1935–1957), plus 30 dissents and 16 concurrences. Most cited: State v. . Harris (126 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. 128 of these were attributed to Devin 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
1940	State v. . Harris· Concurrence†	6 S.E.2d 854	126
1944	Hayes v. Board of Trustees of Elon College· Dissent†	224 N.C. 11	104
1944	State v. Emery· Dissent†	224 N.C. 581	71
1936	State v. . Humphries	186 S.E. 473	62
1938	State v. . Ray	194 S.E. 482	61
1939	Collins v. . Lamb	2 S.E.2d 863	60
1949	Carolina Power & Light Co. v. Bowman	51 S.E.2d 191	55
1947	Brown v. L. H. Bottoms Truck Lines, Inc.	42 S.E.2d 71	51
1944	State v. . Weinstein	31 S.E.2d 920	50
1942	Millar v. Town of Wilson· Concurrence†	23 S.E.2d 42	50
1945	Coleman v. . Whisnant	35 S.E.2d 647	48
1953	Board of Managers of the James Walker Memorial Hospital v. City of Wilmington· Concurrence†	74 S.E.2d 749	47
1945	Fox v. Cramerton Mills, Inc.	35 S.E.2d 869	46
1944	Turner v. . Reidsville	29 S.E.2d 211	45
1949	State v. Camel	53 S.E.2d 313	44

Showing the 15 most-cited of 914 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 A. Devin on?: William A. Devin 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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19 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).