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 1940 / Served to 1970

Roger J. Traynor

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Roger J. Traynor was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1940. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1900 · age 126
Tenure: 1940–1970 · 29 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1940	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Education

University of Chicago

Judicial Record

In our data, Traynor authored 734 published opinions for the court (1940–1970), plus 128 dissents and 72 concurrences. Most cited: Dillon v. Legg (1,026 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. 310 of these were attributed to Traynor 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
1968	Dillon v. Legg· Dissent†	68 Cal. 2d 728	1,026
1963	Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc.	59 Cal. 2d 57	1,019
1960	Neal v. State of California	55 Cal. 2d 11	950
1965	Parsons v. Bristol Development Co.†	62 Cal. 2d 861	918
1942	Bernhard v. Bank of America National Trust & Saving Association	19 Cal. 2d 807	895
1968	Pacific Gas & Electric Co. v. G. W. Thomas Drayage & Rigging Co.	69 Cal. 2d 33	846
1965	Seely v. White Motor Co.	403 P.2d 145	667
1965	People v. Aranda	63 Cal. 2d 518	665
1955	People v. Cahan	282 P.2d 905	640
1961	Muskopf v. Corning Hospital District	55 Cal. 2d 211	527
1943	Estate of Bristol v. Young· Dissent†	23 Cal. 2d 221	508
1963	People v. Ibarra	60 Cal. 2d 460	498
1969	People v. Hood	462 P.2d 370	435
1950	People v. Knowles	217 P.2d 1	425
1956	People v. Riser	47 Cal. 2d 566	418

Showing the 15 most-cited of 934 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 Roger J. Traynor on?: Roger J. Traynor 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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29 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).