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 1958 / Served to 1984

Clarke E. Stephens

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Clarke E. Stephens was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1958. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1958–1984 · 26 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1958	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1966	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Stephens authored 462 published opinions for the court (1967–1984), plus 9 dissents and 13 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Cruz (78 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. 76 of these were attributed to Stephens 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
1978	People v. Cruz	83 Cal. App. 3d 308	78
1975	Goldstein v. Lees	46 Cal. App. 3d 614	73
1976	Meyer v. Benko	55 Cal. App. 3d 937	70
1978	Tresemer v. Barke	86 Cal. App. 3d 656	69
1978	Saliter v. Pierce Brothers Mortuaries	81 Cal. App. 3d 292	68
1979	In Re La Shonda B.	95 Cal. App. 3d 593	56
1980	Motors, Inc. v. Times Mirror Co.· Concurrence†	102 Cal. App. 3d 735	55
1974	Deaile v. General Telephone Co. of California	40 Cal. App. 3d 841	54
1971	Agar v. Superior Court	21 Cal. App. 3d 24	52
1970	Randles v. Lowry	4 Cal. App. 3d 68	49
1970	Sheffet v. County of Los Angeles	3 Cal. App. 3d 720	49
1977	People v. Farris	66 Cal. App. 3d 376	48
1972	Anthony v. Kelsey-Hayes Co.· Dissent†	25 Cal. App. 3d 442	48
1984	State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. v. Drasin	152 Cal. App. 3d 864	47
1978	Carroll v. Puritan Leasing Co.	77 Cal. App. 3d 481	46

Showing the 15 most-cited of 484 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 Clarke E. Stephens on?: Clarke E. Stephens 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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26 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).