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 1977 / Served to 1982

Frank C. Newman

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Frank C. Newman was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1917 · age 109
Tenure: 1977–1982 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Education

University of California-Berkeley
Columbia University in the City of New York

Judicial Record

In our data, Newman authored 57 published opinions for the court (1978–1982), plus 29 dissents and 45 concurrences. Most cited: In Re Marriage of Flaherty (754 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. 83 of these were attributed to Newman 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
1982	In Re Marriage of Flaherty· Concurrence†	646 P.2d 179	754
1981	California Teachers Ass'n v. San Diego Community College District· Concurrence†	621 P.2d 856	492
1979	People v. Eric J.· Dissent†	601 P.2d 549	430
1980	People v. Jackson· Concurrence†	618 P.2d 149	396
1978	Hale v. Morgan· Concurrence†	584 P.2d 512	357
1979	Robins v. Pruneyard Shopping Center	592 P.2d 341	314
1982	Serrano v. Unruh	652 P.2d 985	293
1981	People v. Collie· Concurrence†	634 P.2d 534	278
1978	People v. Arbuckle· Concurrence†	587 P.2d 220	256
1980	People v. Sage· Concurrence†	611 P.2d 874	246
1982	People v. Cardenas· Concurrence†	647 P.2d 569	229
1979	California Manufacturers Ass'n v. Public Utilities Commission· Dissent†	598 P.2d 836	228
1979	People v. Ramirez· Concurrence†	599 P.2d 622	213
1982	Commodore Home Systems, Inc. v. Superior Court	649 P.2d 912	205
1982	Carman v. Alvord†	644 P.2d 192	198

Showing the 15 most-cited of 131 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 C. Newman on?: Frank C. Newman 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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5 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).