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 1994 / Served to 2005

Janice Rogers Brown

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Janice Rogers Brown was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California (6 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1994. She previously served on the California Court of Appeal. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1949 · age 77
Tenure: 1994–2005 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1994	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1994	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1996	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1996	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Brown authored 104 published opinions for the court (1995–2005), plus 64 dissents and 76 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Carmony (1,746 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. 244 of these were attributed to Brown 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
2004	People v. Carmony†	33 Cal. 4th 367	1,746
1998	People v. Breverman· Dissent†	960 P.2d 1094	1,626
2005	People v. Young†	105 P.3d 487	1,280
2000	Armendariz v. Found. Health Psychcare Servs., Inc.· Concurrence†	6 P.3d 669	1,269
2002	Navellier v. Sletten· Dissent†	52 P.3d 703	1,129
1998	People v. Frye†	18 Cal. 4th 894	793
2002	City of Cotati v. Cashman· Concurrence†	52 P.3d 695	719
1997	Engalla v. Permanente Medical Group, Inc.· Dissent†	15 Cal. 4th 951	717
1999	People v. Falsetta· Concurrence†	986 P.2d 182	703
1998	Yamaha Corp. of America v. State Board of Equalization†	960 P.2d 1031	663
1997	People v. Superior Court†	14 Cal. 4th 968	601
2004	People v. Posey· Dissent†	82 P.3d 755	549
1996	People v. Prettyman· Concurrence†	14 Cal. 4th 248	531
1998	Quelimane Co. v. Stewart Title Guaranty Co.· Dissent†	960 P.2d 513	514
1998	People v. Birks· Concurrence†	960 P.2d 1073	492

Showing the 15 most-cited of 244 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 Janice Rogers Brown on?: Janice Rogers Brown 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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10 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).