Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara / Joined 1985 / Served to 1999

James Garfield Stewart

Judge, Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara

James Garfield Stewart was a Judge of the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara (67 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1985. He previously served on the Supreme Court of Ohio. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1880–1959
Tenure: 1985–1999 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1947	Supreme Court of Ohio	–	–
1985	Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara	–	–

Education

Kenyon College

Judicial Record

In our data, Stewart authored 184 published opinions for the court (1947–2021), plus 29 dissents and 18 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Gwynne (Slip Opinion) (160 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. 128 of these were attributed to Stewart 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
2019	State v. Gwynne (Slip Opinion)	2019 Ohio 4761	160
1948	State Ex Rel. Squire v. City of Cleveland	82 N.E.2d 709	142
1950	Mudrich v. Standard Oil Co.	90 N.E.2d 859	124
1950	Gedra v. Dallmer Co.	91 N.E.2d 256	90
1949	American Life & Accident Ins. v. Jones	89 N.E.2d 301	75
2020	State v. Gideon (Slip Opinion)	159 N.E.3d 1190	73
2020	Phoenix Lighting Group, L.L.C. v. Genlyte Thomas Group, L.L.C. (Slip Opinion)	153 N.E.3d 30	67
1951	Sowers v. Schaeffer	99 N.E.2d 313	67
1951	Larrissey v. Norwalk Truck Lines, Inc.	98 N.E.2d 419	59
2019	State v. Ford (Slip Opinion)	2019 Ohio 4539	56
2019	Rieger v. Giant Eagle, Inc. (Slip Opinion)	2019 Ohio 3745	51
1948	Acme Engineering Co. v. Jones	83 N.E.2d 202	50
1948	Mielke v. Leeberson	83 N.E.2d 209	49
1950	Bradley v. Mansfield Rapid Transit, Inc.	93 N.E.2d 672	48
1949	In Re Burson· Dissent	89 N.E.2d 651	47

Showing the 15 most-cited of 231 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 Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was James Garfield Stewart on?: James Garfield Stewart was a Judge of the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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14 years on the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).