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 1869 / Served to 1879

William T. Wallace

Justice, Supreme Court of California

William T. Wallace was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1869. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1828 · age 198
Tenure: 1869–1879 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1869	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Wallace authored 263 published opinions for the court (1870–1879), plus 17 dissents and 21 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Lynch (87 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. 300 of these were attributed to Wallace 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
1875	People v. Lynch· Concurrence†	51 Cal. 15	87
1874	Ward v. Flood†	48 Cal. 36	80
1871	Watson v. Francisco & Humboldt Bay Railroad†	41 Cal. 17	77
1873	People v. Stanley· Dissent†	47 Cal. 113	73
1870	Duffy v. Hobson†	40 Cal. 240	66
1879	La Société Française D'Epargnes et de Prévoyance Mutuelle v. Dist. Court of the Fifteenth Judicial Dist.†	53 Cal. 495	64
1870	De Godey v. Godey†	39 Cal. 157	64
1872	People v. Sanford†	43 Cal. 29	63
1870	Harpending v. Haight†	39 Cal. 189	63
1871	Batchelder v. Moore†	42 Cal. 412	58
1874	Merritt v. Campbell†	47 Cal. 542	51
1871	Hanson v. McCue†	42 Cal. 303	46
1871	Bruck v. Tucker†	42 Cal. 346	46
1874	Houghton v. Austin· Concurrence†	47 Cal. 646	41
1874	Ex parte Hoge†	48 Cal. 3	40

Showing the 15 most-cited of 301 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 T. Wallace on?: William T. Wallace 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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10 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).