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 1932 / Served to 1937

Ira F. Thompson

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Ira F. Thompson was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1932. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1885 · age 141
Tenure: 1932–1937 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1932	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Thompson authored 139 published opinions for the court (1926–1940), plus 14 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: Max Factor & Co. v. Kunsman (142 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. 29 of these were attributed to Thompson 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
1936	Max Factor & Co. v. Kunsman· Dissent†	5 Cal. 2d 446	142
1937	People v. Perkins· Dissent†	8 Cal. 2d 502	122
1935	Bank of America National Trust & Savings Ass'n v. Pendergrass	4 Cal. 2d 258	95
1936	Tuttle v. Crawford· Dissent†	8 Cal. 2d 126	93
1935	Norton v. City of Pomona· Dissent†	5 Cal. 2d 54	82
1935	Douglass v. City of Los Angeles· Concurrence†	5 Cal. 2d 123	75
1936	Nicholson v. City of Los Angeles	5 Cal. 2d 361	73
1935	Fross v. Wotton	3 Cal. 2d 384	64
1935	People v. Latona	2 Cal. 2d 714	63
1935	Union Oil Associates v. Johnson· Dissent†	2 Cal. 2d 727	63
1935	In Re Johnston	3 Cal. 2d 32	58
1936	Agricultural Prorate Commission v. Superior Court· Concurrence†	5 Cal. 2d 550	55
1926	Application of Monrovia Evening Post	248 P. 1017	55
1936	Collyer v. S. H. Kress & Co.	5 Cal. 2d 175	54
1937	Whitten v. California State Board of Optometry	8 Cal. 2d 444	50

Showing the 15 most-cited of 159 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 Ira F. Thompson on?: Ira F. Thompson 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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4 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).