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 1903 / Served to 1919

William G. Lorigan

Justice, Supreme Court of California

William G. Lorigan was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1903. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1855 · age 171
Tenure: 1903–1919 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1903	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Lorigan authored 407 published opinions for the court (1900–1918), plus 4 dissents and 10 concurrences. Most cited: People v. O'Bryan (161 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. 4 of these were attributed to Lorigan 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
1913	People v. O'Bryan· Concurrence	130 P. 1042	161
1915	Western Indemnity Co. v. Pillsbury· Concurrence	151 P. 398	159
1915	Williams v. Kidd	151 P. 1	158
1916	Western Metal Supply Co. v. Pillsbury· Separate	156 P. 491	144
1910	Davis v. Judson	113 P. 147	120
1910	In Re Estate of Blake	108 P. 287	109
1906	Mitau v. Roddan	84 P. 145	105
1912	Matter of Cozza	126 P. 161	103
1909	Miller & Lux v. Madera Canal & Irrigation Co.· Separate	99 P. 502	102
1906	Hewitt v. Board of Medical Examiners	84 P. 39	102
1907	Tingley v. Times Mirror Co.	89 P. 1097	98
1907	People v. Willard	89 P. 124	97
1911	Gurnsey v. Northern California Power Co.	117 P. 906	85
1911	Matter of Ford	116 P. 757	85
1904	Means v. Southern California Railway Co.	77 P. 1001	70

Showing the 15 most-cited of 425 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 G. Lorigan on?: William G. Lorigan 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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16 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).