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 1924 / Served to 1959

John Wesley Shenk

Justice, Supreme Court of California

John Wesley Shenk was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1924. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1875–1959
Tenure: 1924–1959 · 35 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1924	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Shenk authored 949 published opinions for the court (1924–1959), plus 110 dissents and 40 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Newland (879 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. 209 of these were attributed to Shenk 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
1940	People v. Newland	15 Cal. 2d 678	879
1941	Abelleira v. District Court of Appeal· Dissent†	17 Cal. 2d 280	849
1946	People v. Valentine· Dissent†	28 Cal. 2d 121	325
1941	Bodinson Manufacturing Co. v. California Employment Commission· Concurrence†	17 Cal. 2d 321	284
1932	Estate of Lances	14 P.2d 768	271
1931	Smellie v. Southern Pacific Co.	299 P. 529	263
1954	Gagne v. Bertran· Dissent†	43 Cal. 2d 481	253
1954	People v. Western Air Lines, Inc.	268 P.2d 723	247
1955	In Re Hess· Dissent†	288 P.2d 5	228
1943	People v. Ricciardi	23 Cal. 2d 390	216
1958	Alarid v. Vanier· Dissent†	50 Cal. 2d 617	195
1929	Tupman v. Haberkern	280 P. 970	195
1946	People v. Simmons· Concurrence†	28 Cal. 2d 699	190
1955	California Lettuce Growers, Inc. v. Union Sugar Co.	45 Cal. 2d 474	181
1933	Bank of Italy National Trust & Savings Ass'n v. Bentley	20 P.2d 940	181

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,101 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 Wesley Shenk on?: John Wesley Shenk 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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35 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).