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 1850 / Served to 1852

Serranus Clinton Hastings

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Serranus Clinton Hastings was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1850. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1814 · age 212
Tenure: 1850–1852 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1850	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Hastings authored 32 published opinions for the court (1850–1851), plus 3 dissents. Most cited: People ex rel. Campbell v. Clark (24 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. 34 of these were attributed to Hastings 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
1851	People ex rel. Campbell v. Clark†	1 Cal. 406	24
1851	Heath v. Lent†	1 Cal. 410	18
1850	Suñol v. Hepburn· Dissent†	1 Cal. 254	14
1851	Innis v. The Steamer Senator†	1 Cal. 459	12
1850	Ladd v. Stevenson· Dissent†	1 Cal. 18	12
1851	Smith v. Chichester†	1 Cal. 409	8
1850	People ex rel. Field v. Turner†	1 Cal. 190	7
1850	Payne v. The Pacific Mail Steamship Co.†	1 Cal. 33	7
1851	Burt v. Scrantom†	1 Cal. 416	5
1850	Acquital v. Crowell†	1 Cal. 191	5
1850	Seaman v. Mariani†	1 Cal. 336	5
1850	Payne v. Jacobs†	1 Cal. 39	5
1851	Brown v. O'Connor†	1 Cal. 419	4
1851	Brown v. Howard†	1 Cal. 423	4
1851	Graig v. Godfroy	1 Cal. 415	4

Showing the 15 most-cited of 35 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 Serranus Clinton Hastings on?: Serranus Clinton Hastings 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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2 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).