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 2018 / Active

Allison Marston Danner

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Allison Marston Danner is a Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), serving since 2018. She previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2018 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2012	Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara	–	–
2018	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Williams College	magna cum laude	1993
Stanford University		1997

Judicial Record

In our data, Danner authored 12 published opinions for the court (2018–2019). Most cited: Laker v. Bd. of Trs. of the Cal. State Univ. (65 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. 12 of these were attributed to Danner 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
2019	Laker v. Bd. of Trs. of the Cal. State Univ.†	244 Cal. Rptr. 3d 238	65
2019	Orozco v. WPV San Jose, LLC†	248 Cal. Rptr. 3d 623	50
2018	Modisette v. Apple Inc.†	241 Cal. Rptr. 3d 209	33
2018	People v. Acosta†	239 Cal. Rptr. 3d 454	31
2019	S.C. v. G.S.†	250 Cal. Rptr. 3d 696	23
2019	People v. Weaver†	249 Cal. Rptr. 3d 223	23
2018	Roe v. Halbig†	240 Cal. Rptr. 3d 104	23
2019	Bontilao v. Superior Court of Santa Clara Cnty.†	250 Cal. Rptr. 3d 535	18
2019	People v. Atkins†	243 Cal. Rptr. 3d 283	12
2019	Jackpot Harvesting, Inc. v. Applied Underwriters, Inc.†	245 Cal. Rptr. 3d 316	10
2019	People v. Castillero†	245 Cal. Rptr. 3d 90	8
2019	People v. Bankers Ins. Co.†	248 Cal. Rptr. 3d 543	2

Showing the 12 most-cited of 12 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 is Allison Marston Danner on?: Allison Marston Danner is a Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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8 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).