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 1987 / Served to 1991

David Eagleson

Justice, California Court of Appeal

David Eagleson was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1987. He previously served on the Supreme Court of California. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1924 · age 102
Tenure: 1987–1991 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1987	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1970	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1984	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1987	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1987	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Eagleson authored 53 published opinions for the court (1987–1991), plus 7 dissents and 13 concurrences. Most cited: Lucido v. Superior Court (733 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. 21 of these were attributed to Eagleson 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
1990	Lucido v. Superior Court· Concurrence†	795 P.2d 1223	733
1989	People v. Harrison	768 P.2d 1078	634
1988	People v. Karis	758 P.2d 1189	553
1988	Laurel Heights Improvement Ass'n of San Francisco, Inc. v. Regents of University of California	764 P.2d 278	549
1990	People v. Gonzalez	800 P.2d 1159	513
1989	Thing v. La Chusa	771 P.2d 814	440
1988	People v. Melton	750 P.2d 741	430
1990	Delaney v. Superior Court	789 P.2d 934	426
1988	People v. Bean	760 P.2d 996	412
1988	People v. Williams	751 P.2d 395	402
1989	Brown v. Kelly Broadcasting Co.†	771 P.2d 406	341
1988	People v. Lucky	753 P.2d 1052	323
1989	People v. Bell	778 P.2d 129	321
1989	S. G. Borello & Sons, Inc. v. Department of Industrial Relations	769 P.2d 399	309
1990	People v. Turner	789 P.2d 887	290

Showing the 15 most-cited of 73 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 David Eagleson on?: David Eagleson 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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3 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).