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 1967 / Served to 1996

Malcolm Millar Lucas

Chief Justice, Supreme Court of California

Malcolm Millar Lucas was a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1967. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1927 · age 99
Tenure: 1967–1996 · 29 yrs
Education: University of Southern California 1950

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1967	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1984	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1984	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1987	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Education

University of California-Berkeley
University of Southern California	B.A.	1950

Judicial Record

In our data, Lucas authored 136 published opinions for the court (1984–1996), plus 59 dissents and 58 concurrences. Most cited: Blank v. Kirwan (1,989 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. 253 of these were attributed to Lucas 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
1985	Blank v. Kirwan· Concurrence†	703 P.2d 58	1,989
1995	Waller v. Truck Insurance Exchange, Inc.†	900 P.2d 619	1,265
1988	Foley v. Interactive Data Corp.†	765 P.2d 373	948
1993	People v. Ochoa†	864 P.2d 103	877
1990	People v. Jones†	792 P.2d 643	835
1992	Moncharsh v. Heily & Blase†	832 P.2d 899	753
1990	Lucido v. Superior Court†	795 P.2d 1223	733
1995	People v. Lucas†	907 P.2d 373	726
1993	In Re Clark· Concurrence†	855 P.2d 729	661
1987	People v. Anderson· Concurrence†	742 P.2d 1306	613
1991	People v. Wharton†	809 P.2d 290	574
1994	Applied Equipment Corp. v. Litton Saudi Arabia Ltd.†	869 P.2d 454	564
1994	Hill v. National Collegiate Athletic Assn.†	865 P.2d 633	539
1995	People v. Medina†	906 P.2d 2	522
1992	People v. Hardy†	825 P.2d 781	507

Showing the 15 most-cited of 253 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 Malcolm Millar Lucas on?: Malcolm Millar Lucas was a Chief 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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29 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).