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 1904 / Served to 1925

William A. Hoke

Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

William A. Hoke was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1904. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1889–1925
Tenure: 1904–1925 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1904	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Hoke authored 1,421 published opinions for the court (1812–1925), plus 28 dissents and 24 concurrences. Most cited: Small Ex Rel. Balthis v. Morrison (108 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. 180 of these were attributed to Hoke 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
1923	Small Ex Rel. Balthis v. Morrison· Concurrence†	118 S.E. 12	108
1905	State v. Exum.	50 S.E. 283	108
1906	Harton v. . Telephone Co.	54 S.E. 299	103
1921	State v. . Barksdale	107 S.E. 505	74
1905	Hicks v. . Manufacturing Co.	50 S.E. 703	74
1909	Dail v. Taylor†	151 N.C. 284	67
1906	Stanford v. . Grocery Co.	55 S.E. 815	67
1906	Sawyer v. Railroad	54 S.E. 793	67
1905	Jones v. Commissioners.	50 S.E. 291	66
1905	Smith v. Proctor.	51 S.E. 889	65
1905	Ramsbottom v. Railroad†	138 N.C. 38	65
1911	State v. . Murphy	72 S.E. 1075	63
1905	May v. . Loomis	52 S.E. 728	63
1905	Ramsbottom v. . Railroad	50 S.E. 448	63
1922	State v. . Sudderth	114 S.E. 828	61

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,474 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. Hoke on?: William A. Hoke 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

21 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).