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 1973 / Served to 1996

Armand Arabian

Associate Justice, Supreme Court of California

Armand Arabian was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1973. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1934–2018
Tenure: 1973–1996 · 22 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1973	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1983	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1990	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1983	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1973	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1983	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1990	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Education

Boston University

Judicial Record

In our data, Arabian authored 96 published opinions for the court (1990–1996), plus 19 dissents and 20 concurrences. Most cited: Soule v. General Motors Corp. (844 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. 48 of these were attributed to Arabian 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
1994	Soule v. General Motors Corp.· Concurrence†	882 P.2d 298	844
1992	People v. Kelly	822 P.2d 385	653
1993	People v. Welch· Concurrence†	5 Cal. 4th 228	556
1993	People v. Guiton	847 P.2d 45	549
1991	People v. Cooper	809 P.2d 865	549
1993	People v. Latimer	858 P.2d 611	517
1990	People v. Gonzalez· Concurrence†	800 P.2d 1159	513
1991	People v. Edwards	819 P.2d 436	453
1994	People v. Freeman	882 P.2d 249	439
1991	People v. Cox	809 P.2d 351	432
1992	People v. Wheeler· Dissent†	841 P.2d 938	430
1995	Alliance Mortgage Co. v. Rothwell	900 P.2d 601	407
1995	People v. Duvall· Concurrence†	886 P.2d 1252	405
1990	Moore v. Regents of University of California· Concurrence†	793 P.2d 479	394
1993	Horace Mann Ins. Co. v. Barbara B.· Dissent†	846 P.2d 792	389

Showing the 15 most-cited of 135 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 Armand Arabian on?: Armand Arabian was an Associate 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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22 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).