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 1976 / Served to 1987

Cruz Reynoso

Associate Justice, Supreme Court of California

Cruz Reynoso was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California (6 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1976. He previously served on the California Court of Appeal. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1931 · age 95
Tenure: 1976–1987 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1976	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1976	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1982	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1982	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Education

University of California-Berkeley

Judicial Record

In our data, Reynoso authored 123 published opinions for the court (1977–1987), plus 38 dissents and 22 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Dillon (1,034 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. 67 of these were attributed to Reynoso 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
1983	People v. Dillon· Concurrence†	668 P.2d 697	1,034
1984	People v. Beeman	674 P.2d 1318	766
1983	Olson v. Cory†	673 P.2d 720	442
1985	People v. Davenport	710 P.2d 861	409
1983	People v. Fields· Dissent†	673 P.2d 680	392
1985	People v. Phillips	711 P.2d 423	258
1984	People v. Tassell· Concurrence†	679 P.2d 1	237
1984	People v. Avalos	689 P.2d 121	183
1986	Perez v. Van Groningen & Sons, Inc.	719 P.2d 676	164
1985	Gutierrez v. Mofid· Dissent†	705 P.2d 886	156
1985	People v. Trevino	704 P.2d 719	152
1987	Youst v. Longo· Concurrence†	729 P.2d 728	128
1983	Wilson v. Sunshine Meat & Liquor Co.· Dissent†	669 P.2d 9	128
1983	Jessup Farms v. Baldwin	660 P.2d 813	125
1985	In Re Bower	700 P.2d 1269	117

Showing the 15 most-cited of 183 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 Cruz Reynoso on?: Cruz Reynoso 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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10 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).