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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Washington Supreme Court / Joined 1932 / Served to 1949

William J. Steinert

Justice, Washington Supreme Court

William J. Steinert was a Justice of the Washington Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1932. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1880–1962
Tenure: 1932–1949 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1932	Washington Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Steinert authored 647 published opinions for the court (1932–1949), plus 148 dissents and 57 concurrences. Most cited: Shea v. Olson (147 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. 28 of these were attributed to Steinert 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
1936	Shea v. Olson	53 P.2d 615	147
1942	Peasley v. Puget Sound Tug & Barge Co.	125 P.2d 681	144
1939	Beck v. Dye	92 P.2d 1113	130
1936	Blanchard v. Golden Age Brewing Co.	63 P.2d 397	129
1940	Berglund v. Spokane County	103 P.2d 355	107
1942	Northwest Cities Gas Co. v. Western Fuel Co.	123 P.2d 771	100
1938	Dean v. Jordan	79 P.2d 331	97
1947	State v. Northwest Magnesite Co.	182 P.2d 643	96
1936	State Ex Rel. Bacich v. Huse	59 P.2d 1101	91
1948	Kellerher v. Porter	189 P.2d 223	80
1948	State Ex Rel. Washington Toll Bridge Authority v. Yelle	200 P.2d 467	78
1942	In Re Bottger's Estate	129 P.2d 518	77
1942	Trinity Universal Insurance v. Willrich	124 P.2d 950	74
1944	Lynch v. Department of Labor & Industries	145 P.2d 265	73
1946	State v. Robinson· Dissent	167 P.2d 986	72

Showing the 15 most-cited of 852 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 William J. Steinert on?: William J. Steinert 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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17 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).