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 1966 / Served to 1977

Raymond L. Sullivan

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Raymond L. Sullivan was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1966. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1907 · age 119
Tenure: 1966–1977 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1966	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Education

University of San Francisco

Judicial Record

In our data, Sullivan authored 253 published opinions for the court (1914–1977), plus 27 dissents and 28 concurrences. Most cited: D'AMICO v. Board of Medical Examiners (841 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. 82 of these were attributed to Sullivan 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
1974	D'AMICO v. Board of Medical Examiners	520 P.2d 10	841
1973	Gruenberg v. Aetna Insurance	510 P.2d 1032	800
1968	People v. Anderson· Dissent†	447 P.2d 942	762
1975	Nga Li v. Yellow Cab Co.	532 P.2d 1226	760
1971	Foreman & Clark Corp. v. Fallon	479 P.2d 362	747
1977	Serrano v. Priest	569 P.2d 1303	669
1973	Moyer v. Workmen's Compensation Appeals Board	514 P.2d 1224	607
1971	Serrano v. Priest	487 P.2d 1241	593
1975	Skelly v. State Personnel Board	539 P.2d 774	571
1974	Strumsky v. San Diego County Employees Retirement Assn.	520 P.2d 29	443
1969	People v. Ireland	450 P.2d 580	431
1967	Daar v. Yellow Cab Co.	433 P.2d 732	412
1972	Friends of Mammoth v. Board of Supervisors· Dissent†	502 P.2d 1049	399
1974	People v. Thornton	523 P.2d 267	372
1970	City of Long Beach v. Mansell	476 P.2d 423	344

Showing the 15 most-cited of 308 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 Raymond L. Sullivan on?: Raymond L. Sullivan was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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11 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).