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 2018 / Active

Dorothy Chung-Soo Kim

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Dorothy Chung-Soo Kim is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), serving since 2018. She previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2018 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2014	Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles	–	–
2018	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Cornell University		1994
Columbia College		1998

Judicial Record

In our data, Kim authored 5 published opinions for the court (2018–2019). Most cited: Canales v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. (18 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. 5 of these were attributed to Kim 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
2018	Canales v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.†	234 Cal. Rptr. 3d 816	18
2018	Ruiz v. Musclewood Inv. Props., LLC†	238 Cal. Rptr. 3d 835	13
2018	People v. Medina†	233 Cal. Rptr. 3d 758	12
2018	K.C. v. Superior Court of L. A. Cnty.†	235 Cal. Rptr. 3d 325	9
2019	1041 20TH St., LLC v. Santa Monica Rent Control Bd.†	250 Cal. Rptr. 3d 376	6

Showing the 5 most-cited of 5 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 Dorothy Chung-Soo Kim on?: Dorothy Chung-Soo Kim is 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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8 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).