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 1879 / Served to 1887

Robert F. Morrison

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Robert F. Morrison was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1879. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1826 · age 200
Tenure: 1879–1887 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1879	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Morrison authored 181 published opinions for the court (1880–1887), plus 3 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Majors (79 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. 189 of these were attributed to Morrison 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
1884	People v. Majors†	65 Cal. 138	79
1880	Turpen v. Booth†	56 Cal. 65	66
1880	Holmes v. Richet†	56 Cal. 307	63
1884	Eastin v. Bank of Stockton· Concurrence†	66 Cal. 123	54
1885	People v. Mayes†	66 Cal. 597	52
1882	People v. Hong Ah Duck†	61 Cal. 387	50
1884	People v. Gray†	66 Cal. 271	47
1884	People v. Munn†	65 Cal. 211	45
1880	People v. Nelson†	56 Cal. 77	45
1882	People v. Rolfe†	61 Cal. 540	40
1880	Kalloch v. Superior Court†	56 Cal. 229	40
1885	Moore v. Clear Lake Water Works†	68 Cal. 146	32
1881	People v. Campbell†	59 Cal. 243	31
1881	Christy v. Fisher†	58 Cal. 256	31
1884	LeBreton v. Superior Court of San Francisco†	66 Cal. 27	29

Showing the 15 most-cited of 190 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 Robert F. Morrison on?: Robert F. Morrison 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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7 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).