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 1921

Warren Olney

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Warren Olney was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1919. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1870 · age 156
Tenure: 1919–1921 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1919	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Olney authored 103 published opinions for the court (1919–1921), plus 12 dissents and 17 concurrences. Most cited: Ex Parte Daniels (199 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. 7 of these were attributed to Olney 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
1920	Ex Parte Daniels· Concurrence	192 P. 442	199
1919	Werner v. Graham	183 P. 945	145
1920	Victor Oil Co. v. Drum	193 P. 243	121
1919	Riley v. Chambers	185 P. 855	113
1920	Adkins v. Brett	193 P. 251	103
1919	Los Angeles Investment Co. v. Home Savings Bank of Los Angeles	182 P. 293	103
1919	Varcoe v. Lee	181 P. 223	101
1919	McNamara v. McNamara	183 P. 552	96
1920	Lindsay-Strathmore Irrigation Dist. v. Superior Court of Tulare Cty.· Concurrence	187 P. 1056	91
1920	City of San Francisco v. Industrial Accident Commission	191 P. 26	83
1920	San Gabriel Valley Country Club v. County of Los Angeles	188 P. 554	81
1921	Jenkins v. Anderson	198 P. 407	78
1920	Quong Ham Wah Co. v. Industrial Accident Commission· Concurrence	192 P. 1021	68
1920	Lafargue v. United Railroad of San Francisco· Dissent	192 P. 538	66
1920	Estate of Carson	194 P. 5	64

Showing the 15 most-cited of 133 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 Warren Olney on?: Warren Olney 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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2 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).