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 1908 / Served to 1920

Henry A. Melvin

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Henry A. Melvin was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1908. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1865 · age 161
Tenure: 1908–1920 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1908	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Melvin authored 530 published opinions for the court (1908–1919), plus 13 dissents and 26 concurrences. Most cited: Western Metal Supply Co. v. Pillsbury (144 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. 9 of these were attributed to Melvin 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
1916	Western Metal Supply Co. v. Pillsbury· Separate	156 P. 491	144
1916	Western Indemnity Co. v. Pillsbury	159 P. 721	105
1919	McNamara v. McNamara· Dissent	183 P. 552	96
1910	People v. Loper	112 P. 720	93
1911	Stein v. United R.R. of S.F.	113 P. 663	89
1916	Estate of Caspar· Concurrence	155 P. 631	87
1915	People v. Robbins	154 P. 317	86
1915	Great Western Power Co. v. Pillsbury· Concurrence	149 P. 35	85
1909	Perkins v. Sunset Tel. and Tel. Co.	103 P. 190	85
1916	Cox v. Schnerr	156 P. 509	84
1909	Smith v. Bangham· Dissent	104 P. 689	82
1910	Raulet v. Northwestern Nat'l Ins. Co. of Milwaukee	107 P. 292	77
1916	Ryder v. Bamberger· Concurrence	158 P. 753	75
1916	Coronado Beach Co. v. Pillsbury	158 P. 212	71
1909	Cooley v. Miller & Lux· Dissent	105 P. 981	69

Showing the 15 most-cited of 572 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 Henry A. Melvin on?: Henry A. Melvin 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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11 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).