Since taking office in 2019 through 2025, Governor Newsom made 576 judicial appointments – including 131 in 2024 – from a pool of 1,898 applicants. More than half of the Governor’s judicial appointments have been women judges and justices, and more than half also identified as Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic, or Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander.

(Subscription required) Senate Judiciary Chair Tom Umberg said he will call for an audit of what went "spectacularly wrong" with this week's bar exam while law school deans urged the high court to pump the brakes on the state bar's plans to hold an exam retake session in mid-March.

(Subscription required) Orange County Judge Jeffrey Ferguson's admission of drinking daily at work shocks legal experts. His cases face scrutiny, potentially triggering reviews, reversals, and challenges if prejudice is proven.

The California Supreme Court held yesterday that an order sustaining a demurrer was improperly affirmed as to the general maritime claims asserted by a plaintiff who was injured on a ship owned by the yacht association for which he worked, saying that the claims were neither barred by a federal law excluding “club” employees from certain national workplace benefits nor by the exclusive nature of the state workers’ compensation scheme.