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 2020

Ming William Chin

Associate Justice, Supreme Court of California

Ming William Chin was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1988. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Alameda and California Court of Appeal. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1942 · age 84
Tenure: 1988–2020 · 32 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1988	Superior Court of California, County of Alameda	–	–
1990	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1995	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2020	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1988	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1990	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1990	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1994	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Education

University of San Francisco	Political Science	1964
University of San Francisco		1967

Judicial Record

In our data, Chin authored 393 published opinions for the court (1991–2019), plus 34 dissents and 47 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Superior Court (Romero) (3,137 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. 247 of these were attributed to Chin 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
1996	People v. Superior Court (Romero)· Concurrence†	13 Cal. 4th 497	3,137
2000	Guz v. Bechtel National, Inc.· Concurrence†	8 P.3d 1089	1,654
1999	Cel-Tech Communications, Inc. v. Los Angeles Cellular Telephone Co.	973 P.2d 527	1,311
2001	People v. Mitchell	26 P.3d 1040	1,253
2008	People v. Zamudio	181 P.3d 105	1,209
2003	People v. Maury	68 P.3d 1	1,120
2005	People v. Partida	122 P.3d 765	971
2005	Yanowitz v. L'OREAL USA, INC.· Dissent†	116 P.3d 1123	838
2013	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. J.J.†	56 Cal. 4th 766	833
2014	People v. Chiu†	59 Cal. 4th 155	755
1997	People v. Mendoza Tello	15 Cal. 4th 264	755
1999	People v. Falsetta	986 P.2d 182	703
2001	Saelzler v. Advanced Group 400	23 P.3d 1143	685
2009	People v. Avila	46 Cal. 4th 680	681
2001	People v. McCoy	24 P.3d 1210	680

Showing the 15 most-cited of 474 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 Ming William Chin on?: Ming William Chin 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

32 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).