How do judges of the California Court of Appeal reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

California Court of Appeal / Joined 1947 / Served to 1964

Absalom F. Bray

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Absalom F. Bray was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1947. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1947–1964 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1947	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Bray authored 1,001 published opinions for the court (1938–1977), plus 3 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Salgo v. Leland Stanford Jr. University Board of Trustees (149 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 133 of these were attributed to Bray by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1957	Salgo v. Leland Stanford Jr. University Board of Trustees†	317 P.2d 170	149
1952	People v. Burns	109 Cal. App. 2d 524	97
1972	Alford v. Pierno	27 Cal. App. 3d 682	90
1954	Redevelopment Agency v. Hayes	122 Cal. App. 2d 777	89
1957	Pauline v. Fitzpatrick†	154 Cal. App. 2d 872	83
1959	Employers Mutual Liability Insurance v. Pacific Indemnity Co.	167 Cal. App. 2d 369	73
1973	People v. Sobiek	30 Cal. App. 3d 458	70
1967	Moonie v. Lynch	256 Cal. App. 2d 361	61
1975	Fuller v. State of California	51 Cal. App. 3d 926	60
1957	Fellowship of Humanity v. County of Alameda· Dissent†	153 Cal. App. 2d 673	59
1952	Brock v. Superior Court	109 Cal. App. 2d 594	59
1972	Ware v. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc.	24 Cal. App. 3d 35	56
1963	People v. Gibson	220 Cal. App. 2d 15	54
1948	Rauer's Collection Co. v. Higgins†	87 Cal. App. 2d 248	54
1957	Zinn v. Ex-Cell-O Corp.	148 Cal. App. 2d 56	53

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,005 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the California Court of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Absalom F. Bray on?: Absalom F. Bray was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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17 years on the California Court of Appeal. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).