Talk:Supreme Court of California

Authority to depublish
The statement "[f]inally, California courts have the power to 'depublish' their opinions..." is not correct. Only the California Supreme Court has the power to depublish an opinion. Most appellate opinions that come from the District Courts of Appeal are not published. The appellate courts do not have the power to depublish any opinions.

These are the rules of the game. "All opinions of the Supreme Court are published in the Official Reports." (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 976 (a).)

Opinions of a Court of Appeal or a Superior Court Appellate Division (which handle appeals from limited civil cases) are published in the Official Reports if a majority of the rendering court certify the opinion for publication before the decision is final in that court. (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 976 (b).)

The Supreme Court may order that an opinion certified for publication is not to be published or that an opinion not certified is to be published. The Supreme Court may also order publication of an opinion, in whole or in part, at any time after granting review. (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 976 (e).) This is part of the depublishing power of the California Supreme Court.

Probably 90 percent of the attorneys who practice law in California do not understand this power, and it is a power unique to the California Supreme Court. The doctrine of stare decisis still applies in California, however, other litigants are forbidden from relying on an unpublished case or a depublished case as authority. "[A]n opinion of a California Court of Appeal or superior court appellate division that is not certified for publication or ordered published must not be cited or relied on by a court or a party in any other action." (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 977 (a).)

Because all California Supreme Court opinions are published, all California Supreme Court opinions can be cited, and therefore are binding under the doctrine of stare decisis. By exercising its power to depublish opinions, the California Supreme Court is able to control common law development in California without having to grant a review hearing and ordering the case, the parties, and any appellate materials to come before it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.74.77.102 (talk) March 26, 2005

Kathryn Mickle Werdegar?
How is it that of all the current justices on the court, Kathryn Mickle Werdegar is the only one who doesn't have a Wikipedia article of her own? 24.6.66.193 (talk) 19:02, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The official biography is Associate Justice Kathryn M. Werdegar--Jbergquist (talk) 01:46, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Joyce L. Kennard Asian?
While she was born in Indonesia, that country was, at the time, the Dutch East Indies, and the fact she speaks English with a Dutch accent (less than one percent of Indonesians speak Dutch as their primary language), combined with her characteristically Dutch appearance (as can be seen in the photo provided at this link: http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/courts/supreme/justices/kennard.htm), it does not seem accurate to characterize her as "Asian," unless we are going to start calling South African Boers "Black." Its also interesting to note that she was apparently born in a Japanese concentration camp on Java, and it was generally the Dutch colonials in Indonesia who were so interned. I am not aware of the precise ethno-lineage of Justice Kennard, and so while I suppose its possible she may have some Indonesian ancestry (presumably on her mother's side, as per her surname), I think its reasonable to conclude that her characterization as "Asian" was simply a mistake innocently made by someone who noted the fact she was born in Indonesia. KevinOKeeffe (talk) 08:48, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * If you had bothered to run a simple Google search, you would have noticed the numerous sources indicating that she is of Asian descent. For example, Legal Pad, the Cal Law blog (Cal Law is the online site of the Recorder, a legal newspaper published by Incisive Media), quotes a Recorder story in which Kennard noted that her house came with a covenant (long since invalid) which allowed only Caucasians to live there (and then she joked that she could have been the maid).  Also note the discussion of her ethnic background in the press release from USC when she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws in 2007. It would be highly unlikely for a university handing out honorary awards to mess up details such as "Kennard is the first Asian American and the second woman to serve on the state’s highest court."  If you run a search on Google Books, you'll notice that there are articles on Joyce Kennard in books such as Notable Chinese Americans, The Asian American Encyclopedia, and Who's Who Among Asian Americans.  --Coolcaesar (talk) 19:37, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Important cases
I don't understand why someone would say that a list of important cases of the court is an arbitrary collection of facts. The influence that a court has is through its cases. This page is not complete without listing some of the more notable ones. Abortion is clearly a significant issue and my guess is that this case is among the most important couple of California cases on that subject in recent times, so let's put it in. (K. the Surveyor on insecure machine) 69.228.47.186 (talk) 08:27, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree. We should list significant cases, and this is one of them. bd2412  T 15:11, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * As my comment indicated, K. the Surveyor, the problem is that your edit fit very poorly in the section that you put it in. BD2412's solution is more elegant.
 * But a problem that still exists is that this court has decided hundreds (if not more) of cases that are of equal or greater importance. Are we really going to list them all?  --Nlu (talk) 17:08, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Concur with Nlu. K. the Surveyor is clearly an ignorant layperson (almost certainly intellectually, if not physically, a child) who doesn't understand that in the overall scheme of the Court's entire body of jurisprudence, American Association of Pediatrics is one of the Court's least important cases.  (I just ran a search on Google Books to confirm the paucity of references to it.)  The case also happens to be one of the least important abortion cases as well, since virtually all significant abortion decisions have been by the federal courts.  The only reason the case is significant in any way is the degree to which it severely fractured the court (but that's not really notable, since reproductive rights cases always have that effect on appellate judicial panels).
 * In contrast, most American lawyers who graduated from law school after 1975 (not just those from California) have heard of Escola, Tarasoff, Dillon, Marvin, etc. I'm going to start adding some really significant cases to that section.  In a few months, once I've balanced out this mess, then I'll purge the reference to American Academy of Pediatrics. --Coolcaesar (talk) 01:25, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd suggest People v. Aranda and In re Marriage of Bonds, among others. --Nlu (talk) 03:40, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

If we are really going to hash out all of the encyclopedically notable California Supreme Court cases (and I think we should), then eventually this list will overwhelm the article, and will need to be broken out into its own article. Actually, it may already be substantial enough to justify this treatment. Regarding American Academy of Pediatrics specifically, there are cases that are notable for their impact on the law, and cases that are notable for their news value, even if their legal significance is insubstantial. There are at least dozens of books that mention this case. bd2412 T 05:21, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: We have what is basically a stub article at List of United States state supreme court cases. bd2412  T 05:30, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

To restart this important case discussion, I've tagged the section as OR. Most of the cases listed simply give the case name, a case citation, and then the editor's spin on what the case is all about. Most of these mentions lack any WP:RS. I've added an WP:OR tag to the section with the hope that clean up will occur. (Also, I've down-graded the Project Law assessment to Start Class). But if not improvement is made, these cases should be deleted.--S. Rich (talk) 05:33, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
 * My suggestion: a case should only be listed as noteworthy if it has either passed Wikipedia's own test for notability, as evidenced by having its own article; or can be supported by cites to reliable sources that indicate the case has some lasting degree of notability (as distinguished from newsworthiness). TJRC (talk) 21:41, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I disagree that the list needs to be pared back, but if that's really necessary, we should definitely keep all the cases cited in the UC Davis law review article by Dear and Jessen, as those were the ones that were discovered to have been the most heavily cited by out-of-state appellate courts. --Coolcaesar (talk) 15:43, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
 * It sounds like that's an example of "supported by cites to reliable sources that indicate the case has some lasting degree of notability." TJRC (talk) 17:56, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
 * You are missing the issue. Each of redlinked cases, with their particular case citations (footnotes 19-59), have a description supplied by the editor, not by any WP:RS. Moreover, the interpretation and/or decision that these are notable is not supported by any cited academic source. The list is pure WP:OR. Now Dear & Jessen do talk about particular cases, so use them as a source for each of the cases. (It can be multi-cited with a {rp|page number} template for the particular pages in their article that discusses the particular cases as notable.) Remember, we are editing for the general reader, not lawyers. Adding Cal. and Cal.Rptr. case citations might mean something to lawyers, but such cites do not serve to WP:VERIFY the notability of the particular cases.--S. Rich (talk) 21:17, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The redlinked cases, lacking WP:SECONDARY descriptions or comment are now deleted. Yes, I know that Royal Globe and many others are notable within the legal realm, but WP:WTAF applies. And as suggested last week, Dear & Jessen might be used to describe the notability of particular cases. Simply giving us a Pac., Cal., or Cal.Rptr. citation (as a footnote) does not tell us anything about how a particular case has notability.--S. Rich (talk) 18:30, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

First sentence
Currently, it reads that the court is "the highest of the courts of California." I found that to be unnecessarily awkward and changed it to "the highest court in California." I was reverted by with the following edit summary: "no, every federal court is a 'higher' court 'in' California".

It is, of course, true that there are federal courts in California. However, none of them is "higher" than any state court, including trial courts. The two jurisdictions are separate. The only federal court higher than the California Supreme Court is the U.S. Supreme Court. (I won't go into the exceptions in which federal courts can compel California courts to take certain actions based on the federal constitution. I believe those are usually based on collateral judgments, not direct.)

We do want to be precise. Therefore, I suggest the following language: "the highest state court in California."--Bbb23 (talk) 14:49, 25 December 2014 (UTC)


 * It should be "court of California". Sorry, this is an ongoing issue to differentiate between courts "in" a state and courts "of" a state. Saying that the California Supreme Court is the highest court "in" the state is implying that its the highest court of all "jurisdictions" in the state. Federal courts are superior to state courts just like appeals courts are superior to trial courts. Saying that appeals courts are only superior in certain situations is wrong; they are always superior by reason that they can remove a case from an inferior court but not vice versa. Int21h (talk) 16:55, 25 December 2014 (UTC) Int21h (talk) 17:05, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Most important, my proposed language says the highest state court in California. I can't possibly see any objection to that. Second, your understanding of "superior" courts is wrong. A federal trial court does not grab a state court case because the federal court is superior. The defendant in the state court action removes the case to the federal court because it could have been brought in the federal court in the first instance. None of this has anything to do with superiority. The Ninth Circuit, for example, cannot overrule a state court, regardless of which level of state court it is. The Ninth Circuit can disagree with a state court just as a state court can disagree with the Ninth Circuit, but disagreement among courts is not uncommon. Anyway, I'm not going to beat this to death because it's not worth it. If you still object to my change and there is no consensus by others for my change, fine, but in my view the basis of your objection is flawed.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:16, 25 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm content with 's change to the lead.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:10, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Term Limits and Retention Elections
I recently updated the chart of current justices to include a category noting when the justice's judicial term will expire. While this is pretty straightforward for all currently appointed justices, in the case of a future vacancy, it may provide a source of confusion for readers. As briefly discussed in the composition section, if a justice is appointed to fill a vacancy that arose in the midst of a judicial term, that justice must stand for retention during the next gubernatorial election to serve out the remainder, if any, of their predecessor's term. If retained, that justice must again stand for retention at the end of his predecessor's term after either four or eight years.

This has led to confusion surrounding Justice Liu's tenure. Retired Justice Moreno was retained to a 12-year term in 2010, but left the bench in early 2011. His successor, Liu, prevailed in a retention election in 2014, but that will only carry him through to the end of Moreno's initial 12-year term, which expires in 2023. In this case, the question would be how to portray Liu's "term" from 2011 to when he was required to stand for retention in 2014. Listing 2023 would be confusing for readers who know he is standing for retention in 2014, while listing 2014 as the expiration of the judicial term is inaccurate.

One potential change would be to add a category for when the next retention election would be, though that would, in practice, be redundant for all sitting justices. Another thought would be to replace term expiration dates with retention election dates and make a note for when the election is to complete the remaining four or eight years of a predecessor's term. Other ideas? --Js489991 (talk) 17:57, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The issue only comes up when a justice is appointed to a retiring justice's unserved term. (And justices are rarely removed via elections.)   Footnotes (in the "term" category) for the justices who will stand election before the end of their terms would suffice.  --Weazie (talk) 18:28, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Joshua Groban
Joshua Groban is not in Justices list yet. 2601:647:4200:D900:F199:4A48:D3FF:311B (talk) 00:50, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I just added him. I invite others to update. I do not know nor can I quickly find his date of birth or his term-end date. I used his article and the Commission on Judicial Nominees's Nomination Report for the other info. TJRC (talk) 01:40, 9 January 2019 (UTC)