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 1959 / Served to 1962

Thomas P. White

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Thomas P. White was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1959. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1888 · age 138
Tenure: 1959–1962 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1959	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Education

University of Southern California

Judicial Record

In our data, White authored 72 published opinions for the court (1959–1963), plus 7 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Ingle (415 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. 29 of these were attributed to White 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
1960	People v. Ingle	53 Cal. 2d 407	415
1959	People v. Wade	53 Cal. 2d 322	259
1963	Sabella v. Wisler	377 P.2d 889	214
1960	People v. Sweeney· Concurrence†	55 Cal. 2d 27	187
1962	People v. Perez†	58 Cal. 2d 229	159
1960	In Re Newbern	53 Cal. 2d 786	154
1961	Vai v. Bank of America National Trust & Savings Ass'n	364 P.2d 247	145
1962	Stigall v. City of Taft†	58 Cal. 2d 565	133
1962	People v. Sidener· Dissent†	375 P.2d 641	128
1960	People v. Kiihoa	53 Cal. 2d 748	117
1962	Perry v. Superior Court	57 Cal. 2d 276	114
1962	People v. Terry· Concurrence†	370 P.2d 985	112
1960	Yarrow v. State of California	53 Cal. 2d 427	99
1961	People v. Hamilton· Dissent†	55 Cal. 2d 881	92
1962	People Ex Rel. Dept. of Public Works v. Donovan	369 P.2d 1	91

Showing the 15 most-cited of 82 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 P. White on?: Thomas P. White 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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3 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).