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 1889 / Served to 1914

William H. Beatty

Justice, Supreme Court of California

William H. Beatty was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1889. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1838 · age 188
Tenure: 1889–1914 · 25 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1889	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Beatty authored 358 published opinions for the court (1889–1913), plus 194 dissents and 132 concurrences. Most cited: Davey v. Southern Pacific Co. (313 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. 343 of these were attributed to Beatty 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
1897	Davey v. Southern Pacific Co.· Dissent†	116 Cal. 325	313
1890	Havemeyer v. Superior Court†	84 Cal. 327	189
1891	City of Pasadena v. Stimson†	91 Cal. 238	178
1896	Peters v. Bowman· Separate†	115 Cal. 345	139
1894	Eachus v. Los Angeles Consolidated Electric Railway Co.· Dissent†	103 Cal. 614	139
1913	People v. California Fish Co.· Concurrence	138 P. 79	130
1908	J. F. Parkinson Co. v. Building Trades Council	98 P. 1027	122
1889	In re the Estate of Jessup· Separate†	81 Cal. 408	119
1898	People v. Dole†	122 Cal. 486	118
1892	People v. Barry· Dissent†	94 Cal. 481	103
1905	People v. Cook	83 P. 43	101
1897	Spreckels v. Spreckels· Concurrence†	116 Cal. 339	93
1901	In Re the Estate of Fair· Dissent	60 P. 442	92
1906	People v. Weber· Dissent	86 P. 671	89
1904	Holtum v. Grief	78 P. 11	83

Showing the 15 most-cited of 716 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 H. Beatty on?: William H. Beatty 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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25 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).