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 1939 / Served to 1964

Phil S. Gibson

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Phil S. Gibson was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1939. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1888 · age 138
Tenure: 1939–1964 · 25 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1939	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Gibson authored 581 published opinions for the court (1939–1964), plus 21 dissents and 13 concurrences. Most cited: Abelleira v. District Court of Appeal (849 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. 104 of these were attributed to Gibson 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
1941	Abelleira v. District Court of Appeal	17 Cal. 2d 280	849
1958	Comunale v. Traders & General Insurance	50 Cal. 2d 654	586
1958	Biakanja v. Irving	49 Cal. 2d 647	586
1961	Lucas v. Hamm	56 Cal. 2d 583	444
1944	Ybarra v. Spangard	25 Cal. 2d 486	444
1944	Escola v. Coca Cola Bottling Co.	24 Cal. 2d 453	411
1942	Rose v. State of California· Dissent†	19 Cal. 2d 713	382
1962	People v. McFarland	376 P.2d 449	375
1953	In Re Dixon	41 Cal. 2d 756	363
1945	Hobart v. Hobart Estate Co.	26 Cal. 2d 412	327
1956	People v. Roberts	47 Cal. 2d 374	317
1944	Maguire v. Hibernia Savings & Loan Society	23 Cal. 2d 719	284
1941	Bodinson Manufacturing Co. v. California Employment Commission	17 Cal. 2d 321	284
1948	Palermo v. Stockton Theatres, Inc.· Concurrence†	32 Cal. 2d 53	266
1954	Burr v. Sherwin Williams Co.	268 P.2d 1041	257

Showing the 15 most-cited of 615 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 Phil S. Gibson on?: Phil S. Gibson 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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25 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).