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 1919 / Served to 1926

Thomas J. Lennon

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Thomas J. Lennon was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1919. They previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Marin and California Court of Appeal. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1866 · age 160
Tenure: 1919–1926 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1902	Superior Court of California, County of Marin	–	–
1910	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1919	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Lennon authored 530 published opinions for the court (1911–1926), plus 8 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Miller v. Board of Public Works of Los Angeles (339 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. 8 of these were attributed to Lennon 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
1925	Miller v. Board of Public Works of Los Angeles	234 P. 381	339
1922	In Re Estate of Cover	204 P. 583	162
1923	See v. North American Accident Insurance· Dissent	213 P. 42	152
1921	Minifie v. Rowley	202 P. 673	139
1925	Zahn v. Board of Public Works of Los Angeles	234 P. 388	131
1922	Reaugh v. Cudahy Packing Co.	208 P. 126	123
1920	Zellner v. Wassman	193 P. 84	121
1925	Estate of Perkins	235 P. 45	120
1922	Press Publishing Co. v. Industrial Accident Commission	210 P. 820	108
1925	Rush v. Lagomarsino	237 P. 1066	101
1923	Miller & Lux Inc. v. Superior Court	219 P. 1006	98
1924	Wenban Estate, Inc. v. Hewlett	227 P. 723	93
1920	People v. Nakis	193 P. 92	85
1921	Coulter v. Pool	201 P. 120	82
1922	Kish v. California State Automobile Ass'n	212 P. 27	80

Showing the 15 most-cited of 541 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 Thomas J. Lennon on?: Thomas J. Lennon 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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7 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).