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 1891 / Served to 1903

Charles H. Garoutte

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Charles H. Garoutte was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1891. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1855 · age 171
Tenure: 1891–1903 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1891	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Garoutte authored 592 published opinions for the court (1891–1902), plus 35 dissents and 30 concurrences. Most cited: Blythe v. Ayres (136 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. 486 of these were attributed to Garoutte 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
1892	Blythe v. Ayres†	96 Cal. 532	136
1901	People v. Castro	65 P. 13	123
1898	People v. Dole· Dissent†	122 Cal. 486	118
1893	Bury v. Young†	98 Cal. 446	109
1895	Judson v. Giant Powder Co.†	107 Cal. 549	108
1901	In Re Begerow· Dissent	65 P. 828	104
1892	People v. Barry†	94 Cal. 481	103
1901	In Re the Estate of Fair	60 P. 442	92
1895	Mattingly v. Pennie· Concurrence†	105 Cal. 514	92
1901	Puckhaber v. Southern Pacific Co.	64 P. 480	84
1896	People v. Conkling†	111 Cal. 616	84
1895	Shearman v. Jorgensen†	106 Cal. 483	80
1896	Dailey v. Superior Court†	112 Cal. 94	77
1897	City of Oakland v. Oakland Water Front Co.· Concurrence	118 Cal. 160	74
1902	McCabe v. Healy	70 P. 1008	71

Showing the 15 most-cited of 658 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 Charles H. Garoutte on?: Charles H. Garoutte 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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12 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).