Richard B. Sanders

Richard B. Sanders is a former justice of the Washington Supreme Court. Early life and education Richard Sanders attended Highline High School. In school, he played horn in the band and was a member of the debate team. He graduated from the University of Washington, where he studied political science and wrote for the Daily of the University of Washington, then went on to earn his Juris Doctor degree from the same university. Career After law school, Sanders became an active litigation attorney who, according to Seattle Metropolitan was "best known for representing builders and property owners battling land-use constraints. But he also represented many poor and minority clients in discrimination and injury suits." In 1976, he was one of the first lawyers to defy the American Bar Association's Code of Professional Responsibility that proscribed public advertising. He was elected in 1995 to a partial term to fill a vacancy on the Washington Supreme Court, defeating Rosselle Pekelis despite a "not qualified" rating from the King County Bar Association. He was re-elected to two additional full six-year terms in 1998 and 2004. During his tenure on the court, Sanders wrote more dissenting opinions than any other justice in the court's history. He surprised the conservatives who had backed his first bid by adopting strong civil libertarian positions, casting the sole dissent against Washington's three-strikes law and frequently siding with criminal defendants in appellate cases, including one case in which he was the sole justice to posit that a Black motorist wrongfully arrested for a traffic violation had a right to resist arrest.