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 1970 / Served to 1990

Marcus Maurice Kaufman

Associate Justice, Supreme Court of California

Marcus Maurice Kaufman was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1970. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1929 · age 97
Tenure: 1970–1990 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1970	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1987	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1987	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Kaufman authored 39 published opinions for the court (1987–1990), plus 7 dissents and 29 concurrences. Most cited: Foley v. Interactive Data Corp. (948 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. 40 of these were attributed to Kaufman 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
1988	Foley v. Interactive Data Corp.· Concurrence†	765 P.2d 373	948
1990	Silberg v. Anderson	786 P.2d 365	660
1987	People v. Anderson· Concurrence†	742 P.2d 1306	613
1989	Thing v. La Chusa· Concurrence†	771 P.2d 814	440
1989	People v. Lang	782 P.2d 627	436
1988	Evangelatos v. Superior Court· Concurrence†	753 P.2d 585	420
1989	People v. Bloom	774 P.2d 698	389
1987	People v. Woodhead	741 P.2d 154	388
1988	Nally v. Grace Community Church· Concurrence†	763 P.2d 948	356
1988	People v. Brown· Concurrence†	758 P.2d 1135	337
1988	People v. Morris	756 P.2d 843	323
1989	People v. Bell· Concurrence†	778 P.2d 129	321
1989	People v. Edelbacher	766 P.2d 1	318
1988	People v. Crandell	760 P.2d 423	313
1989	S. G. Borello & Sons, Inc. v. Department of Industrial Relations· Dissent†	769 P.2d 399	309

Showing the 15 most-cited of 75 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 Marcus Maurice Kaufman on?: Marcus Maurice Kaufman 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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20 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).