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 1888 / Served to 1891

John D. Works

Justice, Supreme Court of California

John D. Works was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1888. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1928 · age 98
Tenure: 1888–1891 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1888	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Works authored 205 published opinions for the court (1888–1927), plus 9 dissents and 16 concurrences. Most cited: Sharon v. Sharon, 11991 (Cal. 7-17-1889) (138 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. 228 of these were attributed to Works 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
1889	Sharon v. Sharon, 11991 (Cal. 7-17-1889)	79 Cal. 633	138
1889	In re the Estate of Jessup· Dissent†	81 Cal. 408	119
1890	Kennedy v. Board of Education†	82 Cal. 483	73
1889	People v. Bushton†	80 Cal. 160	72
1889	Lawrence v. Gayetty†	78 Cal. 126	70
1890	People v. Morino†	85 Cal. 515	64
1890	Spring Valley Water Works v. City & County of San Francisco†	82 Cal. 286	57
1890	Watson v. Sutro· Concurrence†	86 Cal. 500	56
1890	White v. White· Dissent†	82 Cal. 427	56
1889	People v. Chuck†	78 Cal. 317	55
1889	People v. Olsen†	80 Cal. 122	53
1890	Daley v. Russ· Dissent†	86 Cal. 114	52
1890	Davies v. City of Los Angeles†	86 Cal. 37	49
1889	People v. Reed†	81 Cal. 70	49
1889	Marriner v. Dennison†	78 Cal. 202	48

Showing the 15 most-cited of 231 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 D. Works on?: John D. Works 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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2 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).