Washington Supreme Court
the highest court in the U.S. state of Washington
The Washington Supreme Court is the highest court in the state judiciary of the U.S. state of Washington. The court is composed of a chief justice and eight associate justices. Members of the court are elected to six-year terms. Justices must retire at the end of the calendar year in which they reach the age of 75, per the Washington State Constitution.
The chief justice is chosen by secret ballot by the Justices to serve a 4-year term. The current chief justice is Debra L. Stephens, who began her term in January 2025. She previously served as Chief Justice from 2019-2020, serving out the remainder of Chief Justice Mary Fairhurst's term when she retired.
Prior to January 1997 (pursuant to a Constitutional amendment adopted in 1995), the post of chief justice was held for a 2-year term by a justice who (i) was one of the Justices with 2 years left in their term, (ii) was the most senior in years of service of that cohort, and (iii) (generally) had not previously served as chief justice. The last chief justice under the rotation system, Barbara Durham, was the architect of the present internal election system and was the first to be elected under the new procedure, serving until her resignation in 1999.
The court convenes in the Temple of Justice, a historic building on the Washington State Capitol campus in Olympia, Washington.
The public source identifies “Washington Supreme Court” as the highest court in the U.S. state of Washington. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Washington, Supreme and Court.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4167888. The Library of Congress control number is n50068491. Authority coordinates are 47.037, -122.905. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2025, 2019, 2020 and 1997.
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This entry incorporates text from “Washington Supreme Court” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.