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 1880 / Served to 1891

James D. Thornton

Justice, Supreme Court of California

James D. Thornton was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1880. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1823 · age 203
Tenure: 1880–1891 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1880	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Thornton authored 365 published opinions for the court (1880–1891), plus 52 dissents and 88 concurrences. Most cited: Sharon v. Sharon (149 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. 503 of these were attributed to Thornton 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
1888	Sharon v. Sharon· Dissent†	75 Cal. 1	149
1889	Sharon v. Sharon, 11991 (Cal. 7-17-1889)· Concurrence	79 Cal. 633	138
1885	Reardon v. City of San Francisco†	66 Cal. 492	114
1886	Oakland Paving Co. v. Hilton†	69 Cal. 479	107
1890	Munro v. Pacific Coast Dredging & Reclamation Co.†	84 Cal. 515	105
1885	Sharon v. Sharon· Separate†	67 Cal. 185	105
1884	People v. Gold Run Ditch & Mining Co.· Concurrence†	66 Cal. 138	86
1890	In re the Estate of Stevens†	83 Cal. 322	83
1884	Emeric v. Alvarado†	64 Cal. 529	83
1883	Unger v. Mooney	63 Cal. 586	77
1887	Auzerais v. Naglee· Dissent†	74 Cal. 60	74
1889	People v. Bushton· Dissent†	80 Cal. 160	72
1889	People v. Mize· Concurrence†	80 Cal. 41	72
1889	Learned v. Castle· Dissent†	78 Cal. 454	64
1888	In re the Estate of Cook· Dissent†	77 Cal. 220	63

Showing the 15 most-cited of 506 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 James D. Thornton on?: James D. Thornton was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California.

Sources

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

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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).