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 1858 / Served to 1862

Joseph G. Baldwin

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Joseph G. Baldwin was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California (6 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1858. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1815 · age 211
Tenure: 1858–1862 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1858	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Baldwin authored 484 published opinions for the court (1858–1862), plus 6 concurrences. Most cited: Hart v. Burnett (139 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. 490 of these were attributed to Baldwin 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
1860	Hart v. Burnett†	15 Cal. 530	139
1860	Baker v. Joseph†	16 Cal. 173	59
1860	Harding & Loftin v. Jasper†	14 Cal. 642	58
1860	People v. Williams†	17 Cal. 142	58
1859	Saunders v. Haynes†	13 Cal. 145	54
1860	Reynolds v. Harris†	14 Cal. 667	51
1860	Searcy v. Grow· Concurrence†	15 Cal. 117	51
1860	Stevens v. Irwin†	15 Cal. 503	45
1860	Robinson v. Bd. of Supervisors of Sacramento†	16 Cal. 208	45
1859	Hunter v. Watson†	12 Cal. 363	43
1859	City of Oakland v. Carpentier†	13 Cal. 540	41
1859	Merritt & Bourne v. Judd & Byrne†	14 Cal. 59	40
1861	Ex parte Perkins†	18 Cal. 60	39
1859	Bensley v. Mountain Lake Water Co.†	13 Cal. 306	36
1859	Jackson v. Feather River & Gibsonville Water Co.†	14 Cal. 18	36

Showing the 15 most-cited of 490 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 Joseph G. Baldwin on?: Joseph G. Baldwin was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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3 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).