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 1964 / Served to 1974

Louis H. Burke

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Louis H. Burke was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1964. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1905 · age 121
Tenure: 1964–1974 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1964	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Burke authored 230 published opinions for the court (1965–1975), plus 107 dissents and 43 concurrences. Most cited: In Re Estrada (2,432 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. 183 of these were attributed to Burke 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
1965	In Re Estrada· Dissent†	63 Cal. 2d 740	2,432
1968	Rowland v. Christian· Dissent†	69 Cal. 2d 108	1,329
1965	People v. Dorado· Dissent†	62 Cal. 2d 338	934
1968	People v. Anderson· Dissent†	447 P.2d 942	762
1971	Bixby v. Pierno· Concurrence†	481 P.2d 242	549
1974	Strumsky v. San Diego County Employees Retirement Assn.· Dissent†	520 P.2d 29	443
1972	Nestle v. City of Santa Monica· Concurrence†	496 P.2d 480	385
1970	Alcorn v. Anbro Engineering, Inc.	468 P.2d 216	366
1970	Keeler v. Superior Court· Dissent†	470 P.2d 617	360
1965	People v. Washington· Dissent†	62 Cal. 2d 777	351
1969	People v. Bradley	460 P.2d 129	333
1969	Morrison v. State Board of Education· Concurrence†	461 P.2d 375	325
1965	People v. Stewart· Concurrence†	62 Cal. 2d 571	324
1969	People v. Francis†	71 Cal. 2d 66	322
1971	County of Alameda v. Carleson	488 P.2d 953	316

Showing the 15 most-cited of 380 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 Louis H. Burke on?: Louis H. Burke 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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10 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).