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 1980

Edwin L. Jefferson

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Edwin L. Jefferson was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1975. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1975–1980 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

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

Judicial Record

In our data, Jefferson authored 135 published opinions for the court (1976–1981), plus 19 dissents and 14 concurrences. Most cited: Cleary v. American Airlines, Inc. (205 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. 42 of these were attributed to Jefferson 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
1980	Cleary v. American Airlines, Inc.	111 Cal. App. 3d 443	205
1976	Roberts v. Ball, Hunt, Hart, Brown & Baerwitz†	57 Cal. App. 3d 104	120
1976	Cabell v. Lynette G.· Dissent†	54 Cal. App. 3d 1087	104
1978	Rodriguez v. McDonnell Douglas Corp.	87 Cal. App. 3d 626	95
1977	People v. Elliott	70 Cal. App. 3d 984	60
1977	Baillargeon v. Dep't of Water & Power of L.A.	69 Cal. App. 3d 670	58
1976	People v. Gibson†	56 Cal. App. 3d 119	58
1978	People v. Reeder	82 Cal. App. 3d 543	55
1977	Fielder v. City of Glendale· Dissent†	71 Cal. App. 3d 719	54
1978	People v. La Fontaine	79 Cal. App. 3d 176	52
1977	Civic Western Corp. v. Zila Industries, Inc.	66 Cal. App. 3d 1	52
1980	Curlender v. Bio-Science Laboratories	106 Cal. App. 3d 811	51
1981	People v. Richard	114 Cal. App. 3d 824	46
1976	DeSuza v. Andersack	63 Cal. App. 3d 694	46
1976	People v. Henderson†	58 Cal. App. 3d 349	45

Showing the 15 most-cited of 168 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 Edwin L. Jefferson on?: Edwin L. Jefferson was a 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

4 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).