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 1927 / Served to 1939

William H. Langdon

Justice, Supreme Court of California

William H. Langdon was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1927. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1862 · age 164
Tenure: 1927–1939 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1927	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Langdon authored 301 published opinions for the court (1924–1939), plus 44 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: Christin v. Superior Court (153 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. 44 of these were attributed to Langdon 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
1937	Christin v. Superior Court	9 Cal. 2d 526	153
1935	Brant v. California Dairies, Inc.	4 Cal. 2d 128	139
1930	Jones v. City of Los Angeles	295 P. 14	121
1933	Gavin v. Protestant Episcopal Bishop	21 P.2d 579	117
1928	People v. Ferlin	265 P. 230	115
1934	People v. McGee	1 Cal. 2d 611	107
1929	People v. Negra· Dissent	280 P. 354	90
1932	Hynding v. Home Accident Insurance	7 P.2d 999	82
1937	People v. Gidney	10 Cal. 2d 138	81
1934	People v. Tedesco· Dissent†	1 Cal. 2d 211	80
1930	Terry Trading Corp. v. Barsky	292 P. 474	80
1930	Los Angeles Dredging Co. v. City of Long Beach	291 P. 839	80
1935	Rosefield Packing Co. v. Superior Court	4 Cal. 2d 120	74
1935	Finkler v. Purcell· Dissent†	3 Cal. 2d 584	68
1931	Jardine v. Superior Court	2 P.2d 756	68

Showing the 15 most-cited of 351 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. Langdon on?: William H. Langdon 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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12 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).