How do judges of the Court of Appeals of Arizona reach the bench?

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

Court of Appeals of Arizona / Joined 1995 / Served to 2003

Cecil B. Patterson Jr.

Judge, Court of Appeals of Arizona

Cecil B. Patterson Jr. was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Arizona, who joined the court in 1995. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1941 · age 85
Tenure: 1995–2003 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1995	Court of Appeals of Arizona	–	–

Education

Hampton University

Judicial Record

In our data, Patterson authored 60 published opinions for the court (1967–2003). Most cited: In Re Marriage of Pownall (111 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. 8 of these were attributed to Patterson 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
2000	In Re Marriage of Pownall	5 P.3d 911	111
2002	State Ex Rel. Romley v. Martin	49 P.3d 1142	61
1998	James S. v. Arizona Department of Economic Security	972 P.2d 684	52
1999	Burns v. Davis	993 P.2d 1119	45
1998	Emmons v. Superior Court	968 P.2d 582	35
1997	L. Harvey Concrete, Inc. v. Agro Construction & Supply Co.	939 P.2d 811	35
1998	Johnson International, Inc. v. City of Phoenix	967 P.2d 607	33
2000	Aaron v. Fromkin	994 P.2d 1039	28
2002	ESI Ergonomic Solutions, LLC v. United Artists Theatre Circuit, Inc.	50 P.3d 844	25
2001	Bennett v. Appaloosa Horse Club	35 P.3d 426	25
1996	Stephens v. Bashas' Inc.	924 P.2d 117	25
2002	State v. Sorkhabi	46 P.3d 1071	21
2002	State v. McMahon	38 P.3d 1213	21
2001	State v. Ward	26 P.3d 1158	19
2001	Defenders of Wildlife v. Hull	18 P.3d 722	19

Showing the 15 most-cited of 60 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 Court of Appeals of Arizona reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Cecil B. Patterson Jr. on?: Cecil B. Patterson Jr. was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Arizona.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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