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Judge Fred H. Dore

DIVISION I, POSITION 7

January 1, 1978–December 31, 1980

Appointed by Governor Ray; Resigned to accept appointment to Supreme Court

Fred Dore's motto as a state legislator and later as a state Supreme Court justice was: "Access for all."

The feisty Seattle native, who worked long hours despite health problems and frequent controversy, championed the underdog. He also kept a listed phone number and an open door during all of his 40 years of public service.

As a state legislator, Mr. Dore sponsored bills to underwrite the education of special-needs students, create the state's first crib-death legislation, and establish community colleges.

As a Supreme Court justice, he wrote a decision leading to the first anti-smoking laws. As an attorney, he won a suit for property-tax rollbacks. He also set up ways for new lawyers to offer low-fee help to the working poor.

Politics and the law were his birthright. His father, Fred Dore, himself a lawyer's son, was a Seattle judge. His uncle John Dore was a Seattle mayor in the 1930s.

Yet life was not easy. When Mr. Dore was 4, he contracted polio, and when he was 6, he lost his father.

A 1943 graduate of O'Dea High School, he enrolled at Seattle University. But tight finances sent him to Washington, D.C., for a promised job as a senator's aide.

It never materialized, forcing Mr. Dore to take odd jobs to get through college. He earned an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in 1946 and a law degree from Georgetown in 1949.

He practiced law in Seattle for a few years, then was elected to the state House of Representatives, where he served from 1953 to 1959. He served in the state Senate from 1959 to 1973 and sat on the state Court of Appeals from 1977 to 1980.

Mr. Dore was elected a state Supreme Court justice in 1980 and served on the court from 1981 to 1993, the last two years as chief justice.

 

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