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 1943 / Served to 2001

Stanley Mosk

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Stanley Mosk was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1943. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1912 · age 114
Tenure: 1943–2001 · 58 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1943	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1964	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1964	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Mosk authored 736 published opinions for the court (1964–2001), plus 394 dissents and 383 concurrences. Most cited: Aguilar v. Atlantic Richfield Co. (2,941 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. 866 of these were attributed to Mosk 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
2001	Aguilar v. Atlantic Richfield Co.	24 P.3d 493	2,941
1970	People v. Marsden	465 P.2d 44	2,238
1985	Blank v. Kirwan	703 P.2d 58	1,989
2000	Guz v. Bechtel National, Inc.· Concurrence†	8 P.3d 1089	1,654
1998	People v. Breverman· Dissent†	960 P.2d 1094	1,626
1978	People v. Wheeler	583 P.2d 748	1,612
1998	People v. Williams	17 Cal. 4th 148	1,478
1994	In Re Stephanie M.	867 P.2d 706	1,400
1987	People v. Ledesma	729 P.2d 839	1,290
2000	Armendariz v. Found. Health Psychcare Servs., Inc.	6 P.3d 669	1,269
1974	Pitchess v. Superior Court	522 P.2d 305	1,227
2000	People v. Waidla	996 P.2d 46	1,188
1980	People v. Green†	27 Cal. 3d 1	1,166
1992	Bank of the West v. Superior Court· Concurrence†	833 P.2d 545	1,052
1976	Tarasoff v. Regents of University of California· Concurrence†	551 P.2d 334	1,035

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,513 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 Stanley Mosk on?: Stanley Mosk 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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58 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).