Sarah Parker - Chief Justice Appointment and Election

Chief Justice Appointment and Election

On January 19, 2006, Governor Mike Easley announced that he was appointing Parker Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, to replace the retiring I. Beverly Lake. Parker took the oath of office on February 6, becoming the third female Chief Justice of North Carolina's highest court, after Susie Sharp and Rhoda Billings.

At the time of her appointment, former Justice Robert F. Orr, a Republican and executive director of the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law, was quoted in the Charlotte Observer calling Parker "probably one of the more conservative justices that has been on the court in a good long while...She's going to be reluctant to go out on a limb ... My sense is that you would find very few cases that were close to the line where she favored criminal defendants." Parker calls herself a moderate conservative. "I tend to stick very closely to precedent and the intent of the legislature as expressed in the language of the statute," she said in that article.

Parker decided to run for a full term as Chief Justice in the November 2006 election. Although judicial races in North Carolina are non-partisan, Parker was backed by the North Carolina Democratic Party.

On November 7, 2006, Parker was elected Chief Justice by a 2-to-1 margin over Judge Rusty Duke.