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 1996 / Served to 2003

Consuelo Maria Callahan

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Consuelo Maria Callahan was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1996. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1950 · age 76
Tenure: 1996–2003 · 6 yrs
Education: Stanford 1972

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1996	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Stanford University

A.B.

1972

Judicial Record

In our data, Callahan authored 11 published opinions for the court (1997–2003), plus 1 dissent and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Adams v. Aerojet-General Corp. (57 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. 13 of these were attributed to Callahan 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
2001	Adams v. Aerojet-General Corp.†	104 Cal. Rptr. 2d 116	57
1998	Cohn v. Cohn†	65 Cal. App. 4th 923	56
2001	People v. Bowers· Concurrence†	87 Cal. App. 4th 722	50
2002	Fat v. County of Sacramento†	97 Cal. App. 4th 1270	33
2000	Sutter County Department of Human Services v. Michele B.†	78 Cal. App. 4th 1190	28
2000	Sandahl v. Beverly Enterprises, Inc.†	80 Cal. App. 4th 514	23
1997	People v. Robinson· Dissent†	56 Cal. App. 4th 363	21
2000	People v. Jeffries†	83 Cal. App. 4th 15	18
2001	People v. LaCross†	91 Cal. App. 4th 182	15
2001	People v. Gutierrez†	93 Cal. App. 4th 15	14
2003	Neighbors of Cavitt Ranch v. County of Placer†	106 Cal. App. 4th 1092	11
2001	Wolfe v. Wolfe†	91 Cal. App. 4th 962	10
1999	Campbell v. Derylo†	75 Cal. App. 4th 823	1

Showing the 13 most-cited of 13 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 Consuelo Maria Callahan on?: Consuelo Maria Callahan was a 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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6 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).