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 1926 / Served to 1926

Frank G. Finlayson

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Frank G. Finlayson was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1926. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1864 · age 162
Tenure: 1926–1926

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1926	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Finlayson authored 4 published opinions for the court (1926). Most cited: Estate of Sexton (77 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.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1926	Estate of Sexton	251 P. 778	77
1926	People v. Watts	247 P. 884	57
1926	Stearns v. Abbott	251 P. 907	38
1926	Smith v. Board of Trustees of Barnes City	245 P. 173	14

Showing the 4 most-cited of 4 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 Frank G. Finlayson on?: Frank G. Finlayson 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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Joined the court in 1926. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).