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 1973 / Served to 1981

William P. Clark Jr.

Associate Justice, Supreme Court of California

William P. Clark Jr. was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California (6 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1973. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1931 · age 95
Tenure: 1973–1981 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1973	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1980	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Education

University of California-Berkeley

Judicial Record

In our data, Clark authored 111 published opinions for the court (1973–1981), plus 113 dissents and 56 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. 176 of these were attributed to Clark 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· Dissent†	600 P.2d 1071	8,674
1979	People v. Harvey· Concurrence†	602 P.2d 396	966
1979	People v. Pope· Concurrence†	590 P.2d 859	966
1975	People v. Lent· Concurrence†	541 P.2d 545	814
1975	Nga Li v. Yellow Cab Co.· Dissent†	532 P.2d 1226	760
1980	Tameny v. Atlantic Richfield Co.· Dissent†	610 P.2d 1330	695
1977	Serrano v. Priest· Dissent†	569 P.2d 1303	669
1978	American Motorcycle Assn. v. Superior Court· Dissent†	578 P.2d 899	547
1979	Egan v. Mutual of Omaha Insurance· Concurrence†	598 P.2d 452	544
1978	Neal v. Farmers Insurance Exchange· Concurrence†	582 P.2d 980	473
1974	City of San Jose v. Superior Court	525 P.2d 701	448
1979	People v. Eric J.	601 P.2d 549	430
1980	Molien v. Kaiser Foundation Hospitals· Dissent†	616 P.2d 813	419
1976	People v. Ramey· Concurrence†	545 P.2d 1333	416
1976	Marvin v. Marvin· Concurrence†	557 P.2d 106	396

Showing the 15 most-cited of 280 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 William P. Clark Jr. on?: William P. Clark Jr. was an Associate 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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8 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).