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 2001 / Served to 2011

Carlos R. Moreno

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Carlos R. Moreno was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 2001. He earned a law degree from Stanford University in 1975. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1948 · age 78
Tenure: 2001–2011 · 9 yrs
Education: Yale 1970 · Stanford 1975

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2001	Supreme Court of California	–	–
2001	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Education

University of California-Berkeley
George Washington University
Yale University	B.A.	1970
Stanford University	J.D.	1975

Judicial Record

In our data, Moreno authored 75 published opinions for the court (2002–2011), plus 21 dissents and 68 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Carmony (1,746 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. 164 of these were attributed to Moreno 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
2004	People v. Carmony· Concurrence†	33 Cal. 4th 367	1,746
2003	Korea Supply Co. v. Lockheed Martin Corp.†	63 P.3d 937	855
2006	Flatley v. Mauro†	139 P.3d 2	768
2009	In Re Tobacco II Cases†	46 Cal. 4th 298	705
2008	People v. Lindberg†	45 Cal. 4th 1	687
2009	People v. Chun· Concurrence†	45 Cal. 4th 1172	591
2007	People v. Giordano†	170 P.3d 623	532
2002	People v. Hillhouse· Concurrence†	40 P.3d 754	529
2005	People v. Vieira†	106 P.3d 990	447
2007	Taus v. Loftus· Concurrence†	151 P.3d 1185	431
2006	People v. Reed· Concurrence†	38 Cal. 4th 1224	395
2009	People v. Gutierrez†	45 Cal. 4th 789	384
2006	People v. Huggins†	131 P.3d 995	384
2007	People v. Geier†	161 P.3d 104	378
2005	Discover Bank v. Superior Court†	113 P.3d 1100	370

Showing the 15 most-cited of 164 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 Carlos R. Moreno on?: Carlos R. Moreno 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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9 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).