How do judges of the Supreme Court of California reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Supreme Court of California / Joined 1887 / Served to 1894

A. Van. R. Paterson

Justice, Supreme Court of California

A. Van. R. Paterson was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1887. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1849 · age 177
Tenure: 1887–1894 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1887	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Paterson authored 329 published opinions for the court (1887–1894), plus 39 dissents and 47 concurrences. Most cited: Sharon v. Sharon, 11991 (Cal. 7-17-1889) (138 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 410 of these were attributed to Paterson by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1889	Sharon v. Sharon, 11991 (Cal. 7-17-1889)· Concurrence	79 Cal. 633	138
1888	Matter of the Estate Op Bernard NewMan†	75 Cal. 213	124
1889	In re the Estate of Jessup· Concurrence†	81 Cal. 408	119
1888	People v. Goldenson†	76 Cal. 328	105
1892	Ex parte Liddell†	93 Cal. 633	91
1894	Livermore v. Waite· Concurrence†	102 Cal. 113	85
1887	Lent v. Tillson· Dissent†	72 Cal. 404	85
1893	In re Shortridge†	99 Cal. 526	83
1890	Ex parte Spencer· Dissent†	83 Cal. 460	75
1887	Lamb v. Reclamation District No. 108· Concurrence†	73 Cal. 125	75
1887	Auzerais v. Naglee· Concurrence†	74 Cal. 60	74
1889	People v. Mize†	80 Cal. 41	72
1890	Ex parte Rosenheim†	83 Cal. 388	71
1892	In re the estate of Moore· Concurrence†	96 Cal. 522	62
1888	Ex parte Ah Men†	77 Cal. 198	60

Showing the 15 most-cited of 415 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Supreme Court of California reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was A. Van. R. Paterson on?: A. Van. R. Paterson was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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7 years on the Supreme Court of California. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).