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 1990 / Active

Art Wilkie McKinster

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Art Wilkie McKinster is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 1990. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of San Bernardino. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1946 · age 80
Tenure: Since 1990 · 35 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1985	Superior Court of California, County of San Bernardino	–	–
1990	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of Southern California	with honors	1968
UC Law San Francisco		1971

Judicial Record

In our data, McKinster authored 214 published opinions for the court (1991–2019), plus 4 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: San Bernardino County Children & Family Services v. J.K. (328 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. 91 of these were attributed to McKinster 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
2017	San Bernardino County Children & Family Services v. J.K.†	10 Cal. App. 5th 1071	328
1999	Duarte v. Chino Community Hospital	85 Cal. Rptr. 2d 521	250
2019	Persons Coming Under the Juvenile Court Law. San Bernardino Cnty. Children v. B.F. (In re J.F.)†	251 Cal. Rptr. 3d 602	148
1994	Dill v. Berquist Construction Co.	24 Cal. App. 4th 1426	145
2006	People v. Villalobos	51 Cal. Rptr. 3d 678	137
2007	People v. Thurman	68 Cal. Rptr. 3d 425	117
1991	People v. Nance	1 Cal. App. 4th 1453	101
1993	People v. Vargas	13 Cal. App. 4th 1653	92
2000	People v. Mendoza†	78 Cal. App. 4th 918	91
2006	Border Business Park, Inc. v. City of San Diego	49 Cal. Rptr. 3d 259	84
2000	People v. Giardino	98 Cal. Rptr. 2d 315	83
1996	Saunders v. Taylor	42 Cal. App. 4th 1538	78
2002	In Re Daniel H.	121 Cal. Rptr. 2d 475	77
1997	McDowell v. Watson	59 Cal. App. 4th 1155	75
1999	PARKOWNERS ASS'N v. City of Montclair	90 Cal. Rptr. 2d 598	73

Showing the 15 most-cited of 220 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 Art Wilkie McKinster on?: Art Wilkie McKinster is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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35 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).