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 1978 / Served to 1989

Charles F. Hamlin

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Charles F. Hamlin was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1978. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1978–1989 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1978	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1982	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Hamlin authored 84 published opinions for the court (1980–1989), plus 2 dissents. Most cited: McClatchy Newspapers, Inc. v. Superior Court (71 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. 86 of these were attributed to Hamlin 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
1987	McClatchy Newspapers, Inc. v. Superior Court†	189 Cal. App. 3d 961	71
1988	People v. Jeff· Dissent†	204 Cal. App. 3d 309	54
1984	Gibson v. Government Employees Insurance†	162 Cal. App. 3d 441	52
1988	Takahashi v. Board of Education†	202 Cal. App. 3d 1464	50
1985	Zeilman v. County of Kern†	168 Cal. App. 3d 1174	45
1983	Kately v. Wilkinson†	148 Cal. App. 3d 576	41
1985	Donald H. v. Tanya S.†	167 Cal. App. 3d 946	35
1984	People v. Rosaia†	157 Cal. App. 3d 832	34
1986	Singer Co. v. Superior Court†	179 Cal. App. 3d 875	33
1984	People v. Rioz†	161 Cal. App. 3d 905	32
1985	Elliott v. McFarland Unified School District†	165 Cal. App. 3d 562	30
1984	People v. Harvey†	151 Cal. App. 3d 660	29
1988	Rodriguez v. Superior Court†	199 Cal. App. 3d 1453	28
1986	Boehm v. Superior Court†	178 Cal. App. 3d 494	28
1985	People v. Meyer†	169 Cal. App. 3d 496	27

Showing the 15 most-cited of 86 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 Charles F. Hamlin on?: Charles F. Hamlin was an Associate 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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11 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).