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 1969 / Served to 1989

John Arguelles

Associate Justice, Supreme Court of California

John Arguelles was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1969. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1927 · age 99
Tenure: 1969–1989 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1987	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1969	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1984	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1987	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Education

University of California-Los Angeles
University of California-Los Angeles

Judicial Record

In our data, Arguelles authored 22 published opinions for the court (1987–1989), plus 2 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Sheldon Appel Co. v. Albert & Oliker (472 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. 10 of these were attributed to Arguelles 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
1989	Sheldon Appel Co. v. Albert & Oliker	765 P.2d 498	472
1988	Evangelatos v. Superior Court	753 P.2d 585	420
1989	People v. Bell· Concurrence†	778 P.2d 129	321
1988	People v. Crandell· Concurrence†	760 P.2d 423	313
1988	People v. Thompson	753 P.2d 37	231
1989	People v. Carrera	777 P.2d 121	221
1988	People v. Bunyard	756 P.2d 795	221
1989	John R. v. Oakland Unified School District	769 P.2d 948	200
1988	People v. Jones· Concurrence†	758 P.2d 1165	193
1989	Marlene F. v. Affiliated Psychiatric Medical Clinic, Inc.	770 P.2d 278	180
1988	People v. Kurtzman	758 P.2d 572	148
1988	People v. Boyde· Concurrence†	758 P.2d 25	142
1988	People v. Warren· Concurrence†	754 P.2d 218	139
1988	People v. Hernandez	757 P.2d 1013	134
1988	People v. Hernandez	763 P.2d 1289	130

Showing the 15 most-cited of 31 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 John Arguelles on?: John Arguelles was an Associate 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).