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 1939 / Served to 1959

Jesse W. Carter

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Jesse W. Carter was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1939. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1888 · age 138
Tenure: 1939–1959 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1939	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Education

Golden Gate University-San Francisco

Judicial Record

In our data, Carter authored 430 published opinions for the court (1939–1959), plus 444 dissents and 162 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Watson (7,961 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. 668 of these were attributed to Carter 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
1956	People v. Watson· Dissent†	299 P.2d 243	7,961
1956	Continental Casualty Co. v. Phoenix Construction Co.· Dissent†	46 Cal. 2d 423	439
1948	Summers v. Tice	33 Cal. 2d 80	428
1956	People v. Riser· Dissent†	47 Cal. 2d 566	418
1942	Rose v. State of California	19 Cal. 2d 713	382
1953	In Re Dixon· Dissent†	41 Cal. 2d 756	363
1949	People v. Wells· Dissent†	33 Cal. 2d 330	362
1956	Badillo v. Superior Court· Concurrence†	46 Cal. 2d 269	357
1946	People v. Peete· Dissent†	28 Cal. 2d 306	345
1953	People v. Daugherty	256 P.2d 911	337
1951	People v. Carmen	36 Cal. 2d 768	319
1958	People v. Wein· Dissent†	326 P.2d 457	311
1942	Estate of Platt· Concurrence†	21 Cal. 2d 343	308
1956	People v. Maddox· Concurrence†	46 Cal. 2d 301	303
1957	People v. Carter· Concurrence†	48 Cal. 2d 737	300

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,037 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 Jesse W. Carter on?: Jesse W. Carter 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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19 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).