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 1977 / Served to 1981

Wiley Manuel

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Wiley Manuel was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1927–1981
Tenure: 1977–1981 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Manuel authored 65 published opinions for the court (1977–1980), plus 8 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Wende (8,674 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. 17 of these were attributed to Manuel 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
1979	People v. Wende	600 P.2d 1071	8,674
1980	Tameny v. Atlantic Richfield Co.· Concurrence†	610 P.2d 1330	695
1979	People v. Perez	591 P.2d 63	524
1978	Neal v. Farmers Insurance Exchange	582 P.2d 980	473
1978	Clemmer v. Hartford Insurance Co.	587 P.2d 1098	420
1978	People v. Jimenez	580 P.2d 672	254
1980	People v. Pompa-Ortiz	612 P.2d 941	241
1978	People v. Lilienthal	587 P.2d 706	199
1978	Palos Verdes Faculty Ass'n v. Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District	580 P.2d 1155	191
1979	People v. Saddler	597 P.2d 130	188
1978	Detrich v. Carolyn B.	579 P.2d 514	181
1979	Cervantez v. J. C. Penney Co.	595 P.2d 975	179
1978	Wellenkamp v. Bank of America	582 P.2d 970	175
1978	E. L. White, Inc. v. City of Huntington Beach	579 P.2d 505	169
1979	In Re Marriage of Fink	603 P.2d 881	149

Showing the 15 most-cited of 79 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 Wiley Manuel on?: Wiley Manuel 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).