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 2011 / Former Justice

Tani Gorre Cantil-Sakauye

Chief Justice, Supreme Court of California

Tani Gorre Cantil-Sakauye was a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California (6 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 2011. She previously served on the Municipal Court of California, County of Sacramento, Superior Court of California, County of Sacramento and California Court of Appeal. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1959 · age 67
Tenure: 2011 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1991	Municipal Court of California, County of Sacramento	–	–
1997	Superior Court of California, County of Sacramento	–	–
2005	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2011	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Education

Sacramento City College		1978
University of California-Davis	honors	1984
University of California-Davis		1984
Southwestern Law School		2011

Judicial Record

In our data, Cantil-Sakauye authored 150 published opinions for the court (2005–2019), plus 2 dissents and 9 concurrences. Most cited: Jameson v. Desta (1,051 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. 161 of these were attributed to Cantil-Sakauye 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
2018	Jameson v. Desta†	234 Cal. Rptr. 3d 831	1,051
2011	People v. Clark†	52 Cal. 4th 856	774
2016	People v. Covarrubias†	1 Cal. 5th 838	504
2013	People v. Linton†	56 Cal. 4th 1146	423
2014	People v. Merriman†	60 Cal. 4th 1	410
2012	People v. Souza†	54 Cal. 4th 90	392
2012	People v. Thomas†	269 P.3d 1109	364
2017	People v. Valencia†	220 Cal. Rptr. 3d 230	326
2015	People v. Prunty· Concurrence†	62 Cal. 4th 59	319
2013	People v. Park†	56 Cal. 4th 782	314
2012	People v. Jones†	54 Cal. 4th 1	307
2012	People v. Riccardi†	54 Cal. 4th 758	301
2013	People v. Whalen†	56 Cal. 4th 1	272
2012	People v. Livingston†	53 Cal. 4th 1181	265
2013	People v. DeHoyos†	57 Cal. 4th 79	256

Showing the 15 most-cited of 161 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 Tani Gorre Cantil-Sakauye on?: Tani Gorre Cantil-Sakauye was a Chief 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

15 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).