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 1975 / Served to 1988

Edward Thomas Butler

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Edward Thomas Butler was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1975. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1918–2003
Tenure: 1975–1988 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1975	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1982	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Butler authored 87 published opinions for the court (1980–1988), plus 4 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Fields v. Blue Shield of California (60 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. 15 of these were attributed to Butler 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
1985	Fields v. Blue Shield of California· Dissent†	163 Cal. App. 3d 570	60
1983	Lazar v. Hertz Corp.	143 Cal. App. 3d 128	50
1985	People v. Rios	163 Cal. App. 3d 852	45
1983	People v. Castellano	140 Cal. App. 3d 608	44
1988	Planned Protective Services, Inc. v. Gorton	200 Cal. App. 3d 1	36
1984	People v. Spurlin	156 Cal. App. 3d 119	36
1986	Aetna Life Insurance v. Superior Court	182 Cal. App. 3d 431	33
1984	SKF FARMS v. Superior Court	153 Cal. App. 3d 902	30
1986	Gray v. Superior Court	181 Cal. App. 3d 813	29
1984	J. W. Jones Companies v. City of San Diego	157 Cal. App. 3d 745	29
1987	Kennecott Corp. v. Union Oil Co.	196 Cal. App. 3d 1179	28
1984	San Diego County Department of Social Services v. Angeline W.	150 Cal. App. 3d 865	28
1985	People v. Callan	174 Cal. App. 3d 1101	25
1986	Brose v. Union-Tribune Publishing Co.	183 Cal. App. 3d 1079	23
1984	People v. Devin J.	155 Cal. App. 3d 1096	23

Showing the 15 most-cited of 93 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 Edward Thomas Butler on?: Edward Thomas Butler 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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12 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).