[1] Previously, he had served as a Deputy Attorney General of California under Earl Warren, and an Acting Dean and Professor of UC Berkeley School of Law.

[2][4] Traynor believed (in the words of his biographer, G. Edward White) that "the increased presence of government in American life was a necessary and beneficial phenomenon.

"[10] After his retirement from the California Supreme Court, Traynor spent the last years of his life as a professor at the UC Hastings College of Law.

[11][12] In 1919, upon the advice of a high school teacher, he entered the University of California, Berkeley, though he had only $500 in savings to finance his college education.

[11] At Boalt Hall of UC Berkeley, Traynor wrote articles on taxation, while serving as editor-in-chief of the California Law Review, and became a full-time professor in 1936.

[22][23] In August 1964, Chief Justice Phil S. Gibson stepped down from the bench, and Governor Pat Brown appointed Traynor to the post.

[24] His obituary in the New York Times noted that "Traynor was often called one of the greatest judicial talents never to sit on the United States Supreme Court.

Several of Traynor's decisions were majority opinions that transformed California from a conservative and somewhat repressive state into a progressive, innovative jurisdiction in the forefront of American law.

Also, Traynor did not uniformly join all opinions that could be characterized as "liberal" or "progressive" during his time on the Court; for example, he filed a two-sentence dissent in the landmark case of Dillon v. Legg (1968),[30] which was a major step towards the modern tort of negligent infliction of emotional distress.

An earlier generation of judges had cautiously experimented with legal fictions like warranties to avoid leaving severely injured plaintiffs without any recourse.

[33] In 1998, Regulation (the Cato Institute's journal) published a harsh critique of the California tort law system by Stephen Hayward.

.... "Even if there is no negligence," Traynor wrote further, "public policy demands that responsibility be fixed wherever it will most effectively reduce the hazards to life and health inherent in defective products that reach the market."

While this line of reasoning might be the basis for a legislative debate over which public policies should be adopted to allocate and compensate for risk, Justice Traynor's opinion represents a clear case of legislation by judicial fiat.In a 1966 essay addressed to both the legal community of his time and future generations, Traynor defended his judicial philosophy: There are always some who note with alarm any appellate opinion that goes beyond a mechanical canvass of more or less established precedents.

Slyly they equate justice with the blindfold image without articulating the corollary that decision would then be reduced to a blind toss of the coin.