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 1976 / Served to 1995

Arleigh M. Woods

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

Arleigh M. Woods was a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1976. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1976–1995 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1976	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1980	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1982	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Princeton University
Vanderbilt University

Judicial Record

In our data, Woods authored 283 published opinions for the court (1980–2010), plus 1 concurrence. Most cited: People v. Albarran (389 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. 9 of these were attributed to Woods 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
2007	People v. Albarran	57 Cal. Rptr. 3d 92	389
1989	Fisher v. San Pedro Peninsula Hospital	214 Cal. App. 3d 590	250
1999	Nelson v. Anderson	84 Cal. Rptr. 2d 753	153
2001	People v. Cleveland	104 Cal. Rptr. 2d 641	149
1990	GHK Associates v. Mayer Group, Inc.	224 Cal. App. 3d 856	126
2001	Lockley v. Law Office of Cantrell, Green, Pekich, Cruz & McCort	110 Cal. Rptr. 2d 877	114
1998	Elijah R. v. Superior Court of L.A. Cty.	78 Cal. Rptr. 2d 311	91
2003	Roberts v. Los Angeles County Bar Assn.	129 Cal. Rptr. 2d 546	84
1986	Ansley v. Superior Court	185 Cal. App. 3d 477	82
1986	Rita M. v. Roman Catholic Archbishop	187 Cal. App. 3d 1453	78
2005	Roos v. Red	30 Cal. Rptr. 3d 446	77
1997	People v. Sanchez	58 Cal. App. 4th 1435	67
1991	Valdez v. City of Los Angeles	231 Cal. App. 3d 1043	66
1997	Azusa Land Reclamation Co. v. Main San Gabriel Basin Watermaster	52 Cal. App. 4th 1165	65
1989	Fortman v. Hemco, Inc.	211 Cal. App. 3d 241	63

Showing the 15 most-cited of 284 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 Arleigh M. Woods on?: Arleigh M. Woods was a Presiding 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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19 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).