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 1868 / Served to 1965

William B. Rodman Sr.

Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

William B. Rodman Sr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, who joined the court in 1868. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1817 · age 209
Tenure: 1868–1965 · 97 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1868	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–
1956	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Education

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Judicial Record

In our data, Rodman authored 682 published opinions for the court (1869–1965), plus 26 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: State v. . Vinson (94 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. 136 of these were attributed to Rodman 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
1869	State v. . Vinson	63 N.C. 335	94
1960	State v. Warren· Dissent†	114 S.E.2d 660	77
1876	State v. . Graham	74 N.C. 646	71
1878	Gatlin v. Town of Tarboro	78 N.C. 119	61
1878	State v. . Matthews	78 N.C. 523	52
1869	Hyman v. . Devereux and Others	63 N.C. 624	52
1878	Rollins v. . Henry	78 N.C. 342	51
1960	Robbins v. C. W. Myers Trading Post, Inc.· Concurrence†	117 S.E.2d 438	49
1960	Muncie v. Travelers Insurance Company†	116 S.E.2d 474	47
1874	Johnston v. . Rankin	70 N.C. 550	47
1870	Jarman v. . Saunders	64 N.C. 367	45
1873	Smith v. N. C. Railroad	68 N.C. 107	44
1873	Henry J. Heryey & Co. v. Edmunds	68 N.C. 243	43
1875	Hill v. . Board of Aldermen of Charlotte	72 N.C. 55	42
1872	State v. . Jones	67 N.C. 285	42

Showing the 15 most-cited of 721 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 B. Rodman Sr. on?: William B. Rodman Sr. 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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97 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).