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 1923 / Served to 1939

Emmet Seawell

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Emmet Seawell was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1923. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1862 · age 164
Tenure: 1923–1939 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1923	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Seawell authored 426 published opinions for the court (1923–1939), plus 20 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: Smellie v. Southern Pacific Co. (263 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. 30 of these were attributed to Seawell 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
1931	Smellie v. Southern Pacific Co.· Dissent	299 P. 529	263
1937	Herbert v. Lankershim	9 Cal. 2d 409	157
1928	In Re Alpine	265 P. 947	132
1934	Todhunter v. Smith	28 P.2d 916	123
1937	People v. Perkins	8 Cal. 2d 502	122
1927	People v. Mahoney· Concurrence	258 P. 607	116
1930	People v. Boss	290 P. 881	109
1928	Boone v. Kingsbury	273 P. 797	100
1936	Ales v. Ryan	8 Cal. 2d 82	96
1923	Decou v. Howell	214 P. 444	95
1936	Tuttle v. Crawford	8 Cal. 2d 126	93
1935	People v. Tanner	3 Cal. 2d 279	90
1939	People v. French	12 Cal. 2d 720	86
1925	People v. Perry	234 P. 890	85
1935	Domestic & Foreign Petroleum Co. v. Long	4 Cal. 2d 547	84

Showing the 15 most-cited of 457 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 Emmet Seawell on?: Emmet Seawell was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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16 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).