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 1926 / Served to 1935

John W. Preston

Justice, Supreme Court of California

John W. Preston was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1926. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1877 · age 149
Tenure: 1926–1935 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1926	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Preston authored 494 published opinions for the court (1927–1935), plus 32 dissents and 13 concurrences. Most cited: Tupman v. Haberkern (195 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. 26 of these were attributed to Preston 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
1929	Tupman v. Haberkern· Concurrence	280 P. 970	195
1932	Siberell v. Siberell	7 P.2d 1003	148
1929	Brydonjack v. State Bar	281 P. 1018	141
1934	Philpott v. Superior Court	1 Cal. 2d 512	137
1928	In Re Alpine· Dissent	265 P. 947	132
1927	Price v. Sixth District Agricultural Assn.	258 P. 387	122
1927	Haines v. Commercial Mortgage Co.	254 P. 956	115
1932	Consolidated Reservoir & Power Co. v. Scarborough· Dissent	16 P.2d 268	100
1928	People v. Troche· Dissent	273 P. 767	92
1930	Barham v. Widing	291 P. 173	89
1933	Marsh v. Industrial Accident Commission	18 P.2d 933	84
1927	Kirk v. Culley	261 P. 994	83
1927	People v. Schwarz	257 P. 71	83
1930	Millholen v. Riley	293 P. 69	81
1928	Gray v. Hall· Dissent	265 P. 246	78

Showing the 15 most-cited of 539 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 W. Preston on?: John W. Preston 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

8 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).