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 1899 / Served to 1905

Walter Van Dyke

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Walter Van Dyke was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1899. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1823 · age 203
Tenure: 1899–1905 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1899	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Dyke authored 258 published opinions for the court (1899–1905), plus 18 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: McCabe v. Healy (71 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. 37 of these were attributed to Dyke 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
1902	McCabe v. Healy· Dissent	70 P. 1008	71
1899	Estate of Stanford	54 P. 259	70
1904	Green v. Los Angeles Terminal Railway Co.· Dissent	76 P. 719	68
1903	Murphy v. Crowley· Dissent	73 P. 820	64
1900	Newman v. Freitas	61 P. 907	60
1902	Winchester v. Howard· Concurrence	64 P. 692	58
1904	People v. Donnolly	77 P. 177	53
1905	Estate of Morey v. Wells	82 P. 57	52
1904	People v. Creeks· Dissent	75 P. 101	48
1903	Estate of Winchester	74 P. 10	45
1905	Ex Parte Sohncke	82 P. 956	44
1904	Cook v. Ceas· Dissent	77 P. 65	42
1904	Estate of Granniss	75 P. 324	39
1900	Mulcahey v. Dow· Dissent	63 P. 158	39
1899	Popper v. Broderick†	123 Cal. 456	39

Showing the 15 most-cited of 288 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 Walter Van Dyke on?: Walter Van Dyke 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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6 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).