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 1956 / Served to 1977

Marshall F. McComb

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Marshall F. McComb was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1956. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1894–1981
Tenure: 1956–1977 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1956	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Education

Stanford University
Yale University

Judicial Record

In our data, McComb authored 327 published opinions for the court (1940–1976), plus 289 dissents and 57 concurrences. Most cited: Denham v. Superior Court (2,272 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. 403 of these were attributed to McComb 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
1970	Denham v. Superior Court	468 P.2d 193	2,272
1970	People v. Marsden· Dissent†	465 P.2d 44	2,238
1966	Gray v. Zurich Insurance Co.· Dissent†	419 P.2d 168	1,122
1969	In Re Tahl· Dissent†	460 P.2d 449	953
1965	People v. Dorado· Dissent†	62 Cal. 2d 338	934
1972	In Re Lynch· Dissent†	503 P.2d 921	852
1965	People v. Aranda· Concurrence†	63 Cal. 2d 518	665
1971	Serrano v. Priest· Dissent†	487 P.2d 1241	593
1959	Select Base Materials, Inc. v. Board of Equalization· Dissent†	51 Cal. 2d 640	513
1969	People v. Daniels· Concurrence†	459 P.2d 225	510
1969	People v. Redmond· Dissent†	71 Cal. 2d 745	505
1968	Johnson v. State of California· Dissent†	447 P.2d 352	504
1963	People v. Ibarra· Dissent†	60 Cal. 2d 460	498
1964	People v. Morse· Concurrence†	388 P.2d 33	474
1969	People v. Ireland· Dissent†	450 P.2d 580	431

Showing the 15 most-cited of 673 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 Marshall F. McComb on?: Marshall F. McComb 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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21 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).