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 1982 / Served to 2007

Earl Johnson Jr.

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Earl Johnson Jr. was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1982. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1982–2007 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

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

Judicial Record

In our data, Johnson authored 538 published opinions for the court (1983–2007), plus 58 dissents and 47 concurrences. Most cited: Wilcox v. Superior Court (304 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. 154 of these were attributed to Johnson 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
1994	Wilcox v. Superior Court	27 Cal. App. 4th 809	304
1989	Fisher v. San Pedro Peninsula Hospital· Concurrence†	214 Cal. App. 3d 590	250
1983	April Enterprises, Inc. v. KTTV	147 Cal. App. 3d 805	222
1994	Saunders v. Superior Court	27 Cal. App. 4th 832	220
1999	Nelson v. Anderson· Concurrence†	84 Cal. Rptr. 2d 753	153
2001	Fox Searchlight Pictures, Inc. v. Paladino	106 Cal. Rptr. 2d 906	149
2001	People v. Cleveland· Concurrence†	104 Cal. Rptr. 2d 641	149
1983	Collier v. City of Pasadena	142 Cal. App. 3d 917	147
1995	People v. Torres	33 Cal. App. 4th 37	144
2004	Wolf v. Superior Court	8 Cal. Rptr. 3d 649	142
1997	People v. Mendoza	59 Cal. App. 4th 1333	134
2002	Mercuro v. Superior Court	116 Cal. Rptr. 2d 671	132
2004	Ritchie v. Konrad	10 Cal. Rptr. 3d 387	125
2002	In Re Jerry P.	116 Cal. Rptr. 2d 123	119
1994	Collin v. American Empire Insurance· Concurrence†	21 Cal. App. 4th 787	116

Showing the 15 most-cited of 643 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 Earl Johnson Jr. on?: Earl Johnson Jr. was 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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24 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).