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 1976 / Served to 1996

Donald Bruce King

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Donald Bruce King was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1976. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1976–1996 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1976	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1982	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, King authored 249 published opinions for the court (1977–1996), plus 1 dissent and 6 concurrences. Most cited: In Re the Marriage of Smith (216 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. 39 of these were attributed to King 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	In Re the Marriage of Smith	225 Cal. App. 3d 469	216
1995	Evans v. Unkow	38 Cal. App. 4th 1490	122
1984	In Re Marriage of Stevenot	154 Cal. App. 3d 1051	101
1985	People v. Olivas	172 Cal. App. 3d 984	80
1984	In Re Marriage of Hug	154 Cal. App. 3d 780	80
1986	Keyhea v. Rushen	178 Cal. App. 3d 526	71
1993	In Re Marriage of Olson	14 Cal. App. 4th 1	70
1995	James B. v. Superior Court	35 Cal. App. 4th 1014	67
1984	Jewel v. Boxer	156 Cal. App. 3d 171	64
1988	Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. v. Superior Court· Concurrence†	200 Cal. App. 3d 272	63
1985	In Re Marriage of Bergman	168 Cal. App. 3d 742	61
1995	Scruby v. Vintage Grapevine, Inc.	37 Cal. App. 4th 697	60
1996	Staten v. Superior Court	45 Cal. App. 4th 1628	59
1996	American Software, Inc. v. Ali	46 Cal. App. 4th 1386	56
1989	Sebago, Inc. v. City of Alameda	211 Cal. App. 3d 1372	51

Showing the 15 most-cited of 256 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 Donald Bruce King on?: Donald Bruce King was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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20 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).