Supreme Court of California Almanac

This is not a history book — it is an empirical study that overlays and attempts to explain history and biography with data analysis. This book is a macro take on what California’s high court was like, how it operated, and how its justices behaved over most of its existence. It also zooms in on individual justices who either were contributing factors to macro trends or who were interesting characters in their own right.

This book is also intended as a baseball-statistics-style compendium of everything you could want to know about the California Supreme Court. Who is the longest-serving justice, or the shortest-tenured? Who wrote the most majority opinions, or the most dissents? Which chief justice was the most influential, or the least? All that and more, to enable reporters and researchers to verify facts, and for anyone to terrorize their colleagues in conversation.

This book is for every lawyer in California. Unlike the U.S. Supreme Court, there is no bar of frequent flyers at the California Supreme Court. Instead, any case handled by any lawyer anywhere in our state could go all the way. No matter where you practice or where you went to law school, one day you could stand at the lectern in California’s highest court. When your hero day arrives, this book can provide unique perspective into the court and justices before you.