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 1977 / Served to 1994

Clinton W. White

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

Clinton W. White was a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1977–1994 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1978	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, White authored 263 published opinions for the court (1978–1994), plus 20 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Funes (104 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. 53 of these were attributed to White 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
1994	People v. Funes	23 Cal. App. 4th 1506	104
1981	Electronic Equipment Express, Inc. v. Donald H. Seiler & Co.	122 Cal. App. 3d 834	92
1992	Villa v. Cole	4 Cal. App. 4th 1327	85
1989	Schraer v. Berkeley Property Owners' Ass'n	207 Cal. App. 3d 719	71
1990	Howell v. State Farm Fire & Casualty Co.	218 Cal. App. 3d 1446	63
1990	People v. Tobin· Dissent†	219 Cal. App. 3d 634	57
1994	Miller v. Provost	26 Cal. App. 4th 1703	51
1991	Carboni v. Arrospide	2 Cal. App. 4th 76	51
1981	People v. Ratcliffe	124 Cal. App. 3d 808	49
1978	Maples v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co.	83 Cal. App. 3d 641	47
1993	People v. Pritchett	20 Cal. App. 4th 190	45
1992	People v. Morales	5 Cal. App. 4th 917	43
1991	People v. Page	2 Cal. App. 4th 161	43
1986	Northern California Psychiatric Society v. City of Berkeley	178 Cal. App. 3d 90	43
1990	Koch v. Rodlin Enterprises	223 Cal. App. 3d 1591	41

Showing the 15 most-cited of 290 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 Clinton W. White on?: Clinton W. White was a Presiding 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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17 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).