How do judges of the Supreme Court of California reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Supreme Court of California / Joined 1972 / Served to 1994

Edward A. Panelli

Associate Justice, Supreme Court of California

Edward A. Panelli was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California (6 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1972. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1931 · age 95
Tenure: 1972–1994 · 22 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1972	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1983	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1984	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1985	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1985	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Education

Santa Clara University

Judicial Record

In our data, Panelli authored 111 published opinions for the court (1986–1994), plus 15 dissents and 16 concurrences. Most cited: Bank of the West v. Superior Court (1,052 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. 37 of these were attributed to Panelli 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
1992	Bank of the West v. Superior Court†	833 P.2d 545	1,052
1993	In Re Marilyn H	851 P.2d 826	1,030
1987	Dyna-Med, Inc. v. Fair Employment & Housing Commission	743 P.2d 1323	1,025
1993	People v. Ochoa· Concurrence†	864 P.2d 103	877
1992	Aubry v. Tri-City Hospital District	831 P.2d 317	707
1993	Montrose Chemical Corp. v. Superior Court	861 P.2d 1153	684
1988	Jolly v. Eli Lilly & Co.	751 P.2d 923	622
1987	People v. Miranda	744 P.2d 1127	490
1992	People v. Howard	824 P.2d 1315	489
1993	Cynthia D. v. Superior Court	851 P.2d 1307	437
1992	People v. Perez	831 P.2d 1159	427
1992	People v. Ralph International Thomas	828 P.2d 101	425
1992	People v. Johnson	842 P.2d 1	423
1993	Ann M. v. Pacific Plaza Shopping Center	863 P.2d 207	411
1991	People v. Saille	820 P.2d 588	408

Showing the 15 most-cited of 142 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 Supreme Court of California reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Edward A. Panelli on?: Edward A. Panelli was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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22 years on the Supreme Court of California. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).