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 1982 / Active

Arthur Gilbert

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

Arthur Gilbert is a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), serving since 1982. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1937 · age 89
Tenure: Since 1982 · 43 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles	–	–
1982	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1999	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of California-Los Angeles	English Literature	1960
University of California-Berkeley		1963

Judicial Record

In our data, Gilbert authored 556 published opinions for the court (1983–2019), plus 2 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Gonzales (188 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. 170 of these were attributed to Gilbert 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	People v. Gonzales†	224 Cal. Rptr. 3d 421	188
2019	People v. Julian†	246 Cal. Rptr. 3d 517	112
2007	Wysinger v. AUTOMOBILE CLUB OF SO. CALIF.	69 Cal. Rptr. 3d 1	108
1992	Unzueta v. Ocean View School District· Dissent†	6 Cal. App. 4th 1689	106
1984	Arnolds Management Corp. v. Eischen	158 Cal. App. 3d 575	100
1993	Accardi v. SUPERIOR COURT OF VENTURA CTY.	17 Cal. App. 4th 341	99
1996	In Re Matthew S.	41 Cal. App. 4th 1311	98
1990	People v. Daggett	225 Cal. App. 3d 751	93
2001	People v. Felix	112 Cal. Rptr. 2d 311	89
2009	People v. Ponce	173 Cal. App. 4th 378	88
2001	People v. Shadden†	93 Cal. App. 4th 164	84
1989	Omaha Indemnity Co. v. Superior Court	209 Cal. App. 3d 1266	84
2010	Bookout v. State of California Ex Rel. Department of Transportation	186 Cal. App. 4th 1478	79
1995	Baughman v. State of California	38 Cal. App. 4th 182	78
2010	People v. Moore	187 Cal. App. 4th 937	73

Showing the 15 most-cited of 562 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 Arthur Gilbert on?: Arthur Gilbert is a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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43 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).