Background and personal life

Pekelis was the daughter of Russian immigrants

Russian American

Russian Americans are primarily Americans who traces their ancestry to Russia. The definition can be applied to recent Russian immigrants to the United States, as well as to settlers of 19th century Russian settlements in northwestern America which includes today's California, Alaska and...

. She graduated from Stephens College

Stephens College

Stephens College is a women's college located in Columbia, Missouri. It is the second oldest female educational establishment that is still a women's college in the United States. It was founded on August 24, 1833 as the Columbia Female Academy. In 1856, David H. Hickman turned it into a college,...

 and then the University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

. She married twice; both her husband and ex-husband practiced law

Practice of law

In its most general sense, the practice of law involves giving legal advice to clients, drafting legal documents for clients, and representing clients in legal negotiations and court proceedings such as lawsuits, and is applied to the professional services of a lawyer or attorney at law, barrister,...

 in the Seattle area. She has four children.

On the bench

Pekelis was appointed to the King County Superior Court

King County Superior Court

King County Superior Court, the largest trial court in Washington state, is based at the King County Courthouse, 516 Third Avenue, in downtown Seattle, Washington. It also operates a juvenile facility and a Regional Justice Center in Kent, southeast of Seattle....

 by Dixy Lee Ray

Dixy Lee Ray

Dixy Lee Ray was the 17th Governor of the U.S. State of Washington. She was Washington's first female governor.-Early years:...

, and later re-elected to that position. While there, she was widely noted for a humorous incident in which she asked a police officer in her court who was chewing gum to throw it away. The officer misunderstood her and began to place his gun in the wastebasket.

Booth Gardner

Booth Gardner

Booth Gardner , an heir to the Weyerhaeuser fortune, was the 19th Governor of the U.S state of Washington between 1985 and 1993. He also served as the ambassador of the GATT. He is a Democrat. Before serving as governor, Gardner was Pierce County Executive...

 appointed Pekelis to the Washington Court of Appeals

Washington Court of Appeals

The Washington Court of Appeals is the intermediate level appellate court for the state of Washington.The court is divided into three divisions. Division I is based in Seattle, Division II is based in Tacoma, and Division III is based in Spokane....

, a position to which she was also later re-elected; in total, she served on that court for nine years. Pekelis was appointed to the Washington Supreme Court by Mike Lowry

Mike Lowry

Michael Edward "Mike" Lowry served as the 20th Governor of the U.S. state of Washington from 1993 to 1997. Lowry is a Democrat.Lowry was born and raised in St. John, Washington, and graduated from Washington State University in 1962...

 in April 1995 to fill a seat left empty by the departure of Bob Utter. Major cases of hers include a 1992 Court of Appeals ruling that gender-based peremptory challenges violated the Equal Rights Amendment to the Washington Constitution as well as the United States Constitution

United States Constitution

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...

, as well as a 1995 Supreme Court ruling for the adequacy of existing implied consent

Implied consent

Implied consent is a controversial form of consent which is not expressly granted by a person, but rather inferred from a person's actions and the facts and circumstances of a particular situation...

 warnings given to drunken driving

Driving under the influence

Driving under the influence is the act of driving a motor vehicle with blood levels of alcohol in excess of a legal limit...

 suspects before they took breathalyzer

Breathalyzer

A breathalyzer or breathalyser is a device for estimating blood alcohol content from a breath sample...

 tests.

In her re-election race in November 1995, Pekelis faced Richard B. Sanders

Richard B. Sanders

Richard B. Sanders is a former member of the Washington Supreme Court. He is a land use attorney and an advocate of property rights. He was elected in 1995 to a partial term to fill a vacancy on the court, defeating Rosselle Pekelis. He was re-elected to three full six-year terms in 1998 and 2004...

, a local land use

Land use

Land use is the human use of land. Land use involves the management and modification of natural environment or wilderness into built environment such as fields, pastures, and settlements. It has also been defined as "the arrangements, activities and inputs people undertake in a certain land cover...

 attorney. Sanders defeated her in the election by about 53% to 47%. Seattle Times

The Seattle Times

The Seattle Times is a newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, US. It is the largest daily newspaper in the state of Washington. It has been, since the demise in 2009 of the printed version of the rival Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle's only major daily print newspaper.-History:The Seattle Times...

columnist Terry Tang decried Sanders' campaign as "boorishly partisan" and wrote that the departure of "an excellent judge like Rosselle Pekelis" would likely fuel further distrust of the judiciary. The race was later analysed as the start of a trend towards increasing politicization of judicial elections.

Later career

After her election defeat, Pekelis would go on to join the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission in 1996 and form a mediation

Mediation

Mediation, as used in law, is a form of alternative dispute resolution , a way of resolving disputes between two or more parties. A third party, the mediator, assists the parties to negotiate their own settlement...

firm with other former area judges in 1997.