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 1986 / Served to 1998

Willis P. Whichard

Justice, Supreme Court of North Carolina

Willis P. Whichard was a Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina (7 judges, selected by partisan election), who joined the court in 1986. He previously served on the Court of Appeals of North Carolina. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1940 · age 86
Tenure: 1986–1998 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	Court of Appeals of North Carolina	–	–
1986	Supreme Court of North Carolina	–	–

Education

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Judicial Record

In our data, Whichard authored 625 published opinions for the court (1980–1998), plus 32 dissents and 12 concurrences. Most cited: Bolkhir v. North Carolina State University (360 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. 185 of these were attributed to Whichard 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
1988	Bolkhir v. North Carolina State University	365 S.E.2d 898	360
1994	State v. Rose	451 S.E.2d 211	357
1997	Barger v. McCoy Hillard & Parks	488 S.E.2d 215	226
1994	State v. Watkins	446 S.E.2d 67	217
1993	State v. Syriani	428 S.E.2d 118	208
1987	State v. Brown	358 S.E.2d 1	207
1988	State v. Locklear	368 S.E.2d 377	169
1994	State v. Bacon	446 S.E.2d 542	154
1982	Sparks v. Mountain Breeze Restaurant & Fish House, Inc.†	55 N.C. App. 663	152
1992	Rowan County Board of Education v. United States Gypsum Co.	418 S.E.2d 648	146
1997	Kurtzman v. Applied Analytical Industries, Inc.	493 S.E.2d 420	124
1988	State v. McKoy	372 S.E.2d 12	117
1988	State v. White	369 S.E.2d 813	114
1998	Brown v. Flowe	507 S.E.2d 894	113
1990	Medlin v. Bass	398 S.E.2d 460	111

Showing the 15 most-cited of 669 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 Willis P. Whichard on?: Willis P. Whichard 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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12 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).