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 1872 / Served to 1874

Issac S. Belcher

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Issac S. Belcher was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California (6 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1872. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1825 · age 201
Tenure: 1872–1874 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1872	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Belcher authored 80 published opinions for the court (1872–1898), plus 1 concurrence. Most cited: Frey v. Clifford (57 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. 77 of these were attributed to Belcher 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
1872	Frey v. Clifford†	44 Cal. 335	57
1872	President & Trustees v. San Diego & Los Angeles Railroad†	44 Cal. 106	54
1872	Galland v. Galland†	44 Cal. 475	45
1873	Drake v. Duvenick†	45 Cal. 455	40
1889	Hill v. City Cab & Transfer Co.	21 P. 728	39
1873	Savings & Loan Society v. Austin· Concurrence†	46 Cal. 415	35
1873	Oakland Railroad v. Oakland, Brooklyn, & Fruit Vale Railroad†	45 Cal. 365	34
1873	Polhemus v. Heiman†	45 Cal. 573	34
1873	In re Bulger†	45 Cal. 553	30
1873	Ogburn v. Connor†	46 Cal. 346	29
1873	Linden v. Case†	46 Cal. 171	28
1896	Hardin v. Sin Claire	115 Cal. 460	26
1873	Malone v. Hawley†	46 Cal. 409	26
1872	People v. Haun†	44 Cal. 96	25
1873	Reynolds v. Hosmer†	45 Cal. 616	24

Showing the 15 most-cited of 81 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 Issac S. Belcher on?: Issac S. Belcher 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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1 year 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).