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 1852 / Served to 1857

Solomon Heydenfeldt

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Solomon Heydenfeldt was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California (6 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1852. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1816 · age 210
Tenure: 1852–1857 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1852	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Heydenfeldt authored 298 published opinions for the court (1852–1857), plus 2 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: Beckett v. Selover (65 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. 304 of these were attributed to Heydenfeldt 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
1857	Beckett v. Selover†	7 Cal. 215	65
1856	Downer v. Lent†	6 Cal. 94	41
1855	Wolf v. Fleischacker†	5 Cal. 244	26
1856	Conger v. Weaver†	6 Cal. 548	25
1855	Morrison v. Rossignol†	5 Cal. 64	22
1855	Robinson v. Pioche, Bayerque & Co.†	5 Cal. 460	22
1853	Gaskill v. Trainer†	3 Cal. 334	20
1853	Kashaw v. Kashaw†	3 Cal. 312	19
1856	Reynolds v. Jourdan†	6 Cal. 108	18
1856	Guy v. Ide†	6 Cal. 99	17
1855	Carriere v. Minturn†	5 Cal. 435	17
1853	Hicks v. Bell†	3 Cal. 219	17
1855	Gushee v. Leavitt†	5 Cal. 160	16
1855	People ex rel. Attorney General v. Gerke†	5 Cal. 381	16
1855	Guy v. Franklin†	5 Cal. 416	16

Showing the 15 most-cited of 305 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 Solomon Heydenfeldt on?: Solomon Heydenfeldt 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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4 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).