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 2010 / Active

Goodwin Hon Liu

Associate Justice, Supreme Court of California

Goodwin Hon Liu is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California, serving since 2010. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1970 · age 56
Tenure: Since 2010 · 16 yrs
Education: Stanford

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2010	Supreme Court of California	–	–
2011	Supreme Court of California	–	–
2011	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Education

Stanford University	Biology
University of Oxford
Yale University		1998

Judicial Record

In our data, Liu authored 98 published opinions for the court (2011–2019), plus 8 dissents and 56 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Gutierrez (935 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. 162 of these were attributed to Liu 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
2014	People v. Gutierrez†	58 Cal. 4th 1354	935
2013	The People v. Mai· Concurrence†	57 Cal. 4th 986	818
2016	People v. Franklin†	63 Cal. 4th 261	726
2014	People v. Bryant, Smith and Wheeler· Concurrence†	60 Cal. 4th 335	716
2012	People v. Tully· Concurrence†	54 Cal. 4th 952	629
2014	Iskanian v. CLS Transportation Los Angeles, LLC†	59 Cal. 4th 348	615
2016	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. Ashlee R.†	1 Cal. 5th 1	559
2012	Pinnacle Museum Tower Ass'n v. Pinnacle Market Development (US), LLC· Concurrence†	55 Cal. 4th 223	552
2012	People v. Houston†	54 Cal. 4th 1186	533
2012	People v. Valdez· Concurrence†	55 Cal. 4th 82	472
2015	People v. Scott· Concurrence†	61 Cal. 4th 363	447
2013	People v. Manibusan· Concurrence†	58 Cal. 4th 40	433
2015	People v. Lam Thanh Nguyen†	61 Cal. 4th 1015	425
2012	People v. Cravens· Concurrence†	267 P.3d 1113	396
2016	People v. Jackson†	1 Cal. 5th 269	370

Showing the 15 most-cited of 162 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 is Goodwin Hon Liu on?: Goodwin Hon Liu is 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

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

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).