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 1988 / Served to 2014

Joyce L. Kennard

Associate Justice, Supreme Court of California

Joyce L. Kennard was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1988. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1941 · age 85
Tenure: 1988–2014 · 26 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1989	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1988	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1989	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Kennard authored 295 published opinions for the court (1989–2014), plus 178 dissents and 273 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Scott (1,878 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. 516 of these were attributed to Kennard 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
1994	People v. Scott· Concurrence†	9 Cal. 4th 331	1,878
2009	People v. Doolin· Concurrence†	45 Cal. 4th 390	1,701
2000	Guz v. Bechtel National, Inc.· Concurrence†	8 P.3d 1089	1,654
1998	People v. Breverman· Dissent†	960 P.2d 1094	1,626
1999	Cel-Tech Communications, Inc. v. Los Angeles Cellular Telephone Co.· Concurrence†	973 P.2d 527	1,311
1995	Waller v. Truck Insurance Exchange, Inc.· Concurrence†	900 P.2d 619	1,265
1996	People v. Osband· Concurrence†	13 Cal. 4th 622	995
1991	People v. Price	821 P.2d 610	918
1999	People v. Rodriguez· Dissent†	971 P.2d 618	877
2011	Oasis West Realty v. Goldman· Concurrence†	51 Cal. 4th 811	868
2003	Korea Supply Co. v. Lockheed Martin Corp.· Concurrence†	63 P.3d 937	855
1996	People v. Gardeley	14 Cal. 4th 605	783
2011	People v. Clark· Concurrence†	52 Cal. 4th 856	774
2003	People v. Boyette· Dissent†	58 P.3d 391	765
1992	Moncharsh v. Heily & Blase· Concurrence†	832 P.2d 899	753

Showing the 15 most-cited of 746 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 Joyce L. Kennard on?: Joyce L. Kennard 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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26 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).