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 1857 / Served to 1863

Stephen Johnson Field

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Stephen Johnson Field was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California (6 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1857. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1816–1899
Tenure: 1857–1863 · 5 yrs
Education: Williams College 1837

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1857	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Education

Williams College

B.A.

1837

Judicial Record

In our data, Field authored 234 published opinions for the court (1857–1863), plus 3 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Argenti v. City of San Francisco (156 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. 246 of these were attributed to Field 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
1860	Argenti v. City of San Francisco· Separate†	16 Cal. 255	156
1860	People ex rel. McCauley & Tevis v. Brooks†	16 Cal. 11	112
1859	Horn v. Volcano Water Co.†	13 Cal. 62	88
1861	Brumagim v. Tillinghast†	18 Cal. 265	79
1860	Norris v. Harris†	15 Cal. 226	74
1859	Baker v. Baker†	13 Cal. 87	71
1858	San Francisco Gas Co. v. City of San Francisco†	9 Cal. 453	71
1859	People ex rel. Blanding v. Burr†	13 Cal. 343	66
1859	Houston v. Williams†	13 Cal. 24	65
1859	People v. Murray†	14 Cal. 159	65
1860	Van Maren v. Johnson†	15 Cal. 308	62
1860	Koppikus v. State Capitol Comm'rs†	16 Cal. 248	62
1860	Coryell v. Cain†	16 Cal. 567	61
1859	Pierce v. Robinson†	13 Cal. 116	61
1862	People v. Tinder & Smith†	19 Cal. 539	59

Showing the 15 most-cited of 246 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 Stephen Johnson Field on?: Stephen Johnson Field 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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5 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).