Spin-polarized photoemission with circularly polarized light represents a relatively new technique in surface science. It became feasible with the increased availability of circularly polarized light in the vacuum ultraviolet and soft X-ray regime, generated in dedicated synchrotron radiation facilities. Another important ingredient was the development of efficient electron spin polarization detectors. Supported by group theoretical considerations, this technique was first employed to study the process of optical spin orientation in single crystalline non-magnetic materials. In these samples, spin-dependent effects arise solely from spin-orbit coupling. The experiments revealed the strong influence of spin-orbit coupling on the details of the electronic band structure, such as the symmetry character of the electronic wave functions, hybridization phenomena, and the behavior of degeneracies. The results opened the way to a detailed understanding of the electronic structure and permit a rigorous test of both state-of-the-art bulk band theories and fully relativistic photoemission calculations. Since 1990, spin-polarized photoemission with circularly polarized light is also used to investigate ferromagnetic systems. These experiments led to the discovery of the counterpart of optical spin orientation in ferromagnets, namely, the magnetic dichroisms. Magnetic dichroism means that the spin-dependent photoexcitation from a ferromagnetically ordered system manifests itself already in the photoelectron intensity distributions. Because of this particular property, techniques based on magnetic dichroisms are currently receiving wide interest in the spectroscopic investigation of magnetic systems and phenomena. The following article reviews the current status of the field of spin- and angle-resolved photoemission from solids using circularly polarized radiation. We survey the development of this technique over the last 10 years, covering its applications to both non-magnetic and ferromagnetic systems.