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 1971 / Served to 1983

Frank K. Richardson

Associate Justice, Supreme Court of California

Frank K. Richardson was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1971. He previously served on the California Court of Appeal. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1914 · age 112
Tenure: 1971–1983 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1971	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1971	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1974	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1974	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Education

Stanford University
Stanford University

Judicial Record

In our data, Richardson authored 195 published opinions for the court (1971–1984), plus 110 dissents and 82 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Johnson (2,018 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. 207 of these were attributed to Richardson 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
1980	People v. Johnson· Concurrence†	606 P.2d 738	2,018
1978	People v. Wheeler· Dissent†	583 P.2d 748	1,612
1980	People v. Green· Concurrence†	27 Cal. 3d 1	1,166
1983	People v. Dillon· Concurrence†	668 P.2d 697	1,034
1979	People v. Harvey	602 P.2d 396	966
1979	People v. Flannel· Concurrence†	603 P.2d 1	712
1977	Serrano v. Priest· Dissent†	569 P.2d 1303	669
1976	People v. Kelly	549 P.2d 1240	668
1979	Egan v. Mutual of Omaha Insurance· Concurrence†	598 P.2d 452	544
1978	Amador Valley Joint Union High School District v. State Board of Equalization†	22 Cal. 3d 208	542
1982	People v. Wickersham· Concurrence†	650 P.2d 311	493
1981	People v. Watson	637 P.2d 279	489
1983	Carlos v. Superior Court· Dissent†	672 P.2d 862	473
1978	Neal v. Farmers Insurance Exchange· Dissent†	582 P.2d 980	473
1982	Reserve Insurance Co. v. Pisciotta· Concurrence†	640 P.2d 764	435

Showing the 15 most-cited of 387 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 K. Richardson on?: Frank K. Richardson 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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12 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).