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 1874 / Served to 1888

E. W. McKinstry

Justice, Supreme Court of California

E. W. McKinstry was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California (6 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1874. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1825 · age 201
Tenure: 1874–1888 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1874	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, McKinstry authored 394 published opinions for the court (1874–1888), plus 17 dissents and 55 concurrences. Most cited: Lux v. Haggin (265 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. 463 of these were attributed to McKinstry 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
1886	Lux v. Haggin†	69 Cal. 255	265
1888	Sharon v. Sharon†	75 Cal. 1	149
1874	People v. Doyell†	48 Cal. 85	105
1884	Tompkins v. Clay St. R.R.†	66 Cal. 163	97
1875	People v. Lynch†	51 Cal. 15	87
1884	People v. Gold Run Ditch & Mining Co.· Concurrence†	66 Cal. 138	86
1887	Lent v. Tillson· Concurrence†	72 Cal. 404	85
1878	Cave v. Crafts†	53 Cal. 135	85
1883	Biddel v. Brizzolara†	64 Cal. 354	70
1879	People v. Sprague†	53 Cal. 491	65
1887	In re Estate of Sanderson†	74 Cal. 199	63
1886	Lux v. Haggin†	69 Cal. 255	61
1880	Ex parte Kearny†	55 Cal. 212	59
1874	Pastene v. Adams†	49 Cal. 87	58
1888	People ex rel. Daniels v. Henshaw· Dissent†	76 Cal. 436	57

Showing the 15 most-cited of 466 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 E. W. McKinstry on?: E. W. McKinstry 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

14 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).