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 2003 / Active

Cynthia Aaron

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Cynthia Aaron is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2003. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1957 · age 69
Tenure: Since 2003 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2003	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Stanford University	Psychology, with distinction & honors	1979
Harvard University	cum-laude	1984

Judicial Record

In our data, Aaron authored 240 published opinions for the court (2003–2019), plus 3 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: In Re Yvonne W. (167 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. 143 of these were attributed to Aaron 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
2008	In Re Yvonne W.	165 Cal. App. 4th 1394	167
2009	Brown v. Ransweiler	171 Cal. App. 4th 516	165
2009	Bains v. Moores	172 Cal. App. 4th 445	138
2009	Dietz v. Meisenheimer & Herron	177 Cal. App. 4th 771	131
2007	Cruz v. Fagor America, Inc.	52 Cal. Rptr. 3d 862	128
2012	Thurman v. Bayshore Transit Management, Inc.†	203 Cal. App. 4th 1112	124
2005	In Re Carl R.	27 Cal. Rptr. 3d 612	107
2008	People v. Leon	73 Cal. Rptr. 3d 786	94
2010	Sandell v. Taylor-Listug, Inc.	188 Cal. App. 4th 297	93
2007	SYCAMORE RIDGE APARTMENTS LLC v. Naumann	69 Cal. Rptr. 3d 561	93
2012	People v. Loza†	207 Cal. App. 4th 332	92
2004	In Re Austin P.	13 Cal. Rptr. 3d 616	92
2010	S.M. v. E.P.†	184 Cal. App. 4th 1249	89
2006	NICKOLAS F. v. Superior Court	50 Cal. Rptr. 3d 208	87
2004	ALICIA B. v. Superior Court	11 Cal. Rptr. 3d 1	81

Showing the 15 most-cited of 246 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 is Cynthia Aaron on?: Cynthia Aaron is 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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23 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).