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 2015

Marvin R. Baxter

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Marvin R. Baxter was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1988. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1940 · age 86
Tenure: 1988–2015 · 26 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1988	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1991	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1991	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Baxter authored 363 published opinions for the court (1991–2015), plus 47 dissents and 113 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. 240 of these were attributed to Baxter 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†	9 Cal. 4th 331	1,878
2000	Guz v. Bechtel National, Inc.	8 P.3d 1089	1,654
1998	People v. Breverman	960 P.2d 1094	1,626
1998	People v. Williams· Concurrence†	17 Cal. 4th 148	1,478
1999	Cel-Tech Communications, Inc. v. Los Angeles Cellular Telephone Co.· Concurrence†	973 P.2d 527	1,311
2005	People v. Partida· Concurrence†	122 P.3d 765	971
1994	People v. Rodrigues	885 P.2d 1	904
2011	Oasis West Realty v. Goldman†	51 Cal. 4th 811	868
2010	People v. Albillar	51 Cal. 4th 47	852
1994	Soule v. General Motors Corp.	882 P.2d 298	844
2013	The People v. Mai†	57 Cal. 4th 986	818
1997	People v. Holt†	15 Cal. 4th 619	794
1998	People v. Frye· Concurrence†	18 Cal. 4th 894	793
2006	People v. Avila	133 P.3d 1076	744
2009	In Re Tobacco II Cases· Concurrence†	46 Cal. 4th 298	705

Showing the 15 most-cited of 523 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 Marvin R. Baxter on?: Marvin R. Baxter 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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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).