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 2010 / Active

Elena Jeannette Duarte

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Elena Jeannette Duarte is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2010. She previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles and Superior Court of California, County of Sacramento. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2010 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2007	Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles	–	–
2008	Superior Court of California, County of Sacramento	–	–
2010	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of Southern California		1989
Stanford University		1992

Judicial Record

In our data, Duarte authored 96 published opinions for the court (2011–2019), plus 1 dissent and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Ewald v. Nationstar Mortg., LLC (117 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. 101 of these were attributed to Duarte 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
2017	Ewald v. Nationstar Mortg., LLC†	220 Cal. Rptr. 3d 751	117
2011	Salas v. Department of Transportation†	198 Cal. App. 4th 1058	109
2014	People v. Guilford†	228 Cal. App. 4th 651	98
2011	Stebley v. Litton Loan Servicing, LLP†	202 Cal. App. 4th 522	96
2012	R.T. v. Superior Court†	202 Cal. App. 4th 908	77
2011	People v. Lopez†	198 Cal. App. 4th 1106	76
2018	People v. Williams†	232 Cal. Rptr. 3d 671	61
2013	Browne v. County of Tehama†	213 Cal. App. 4th 704	61
2016	People v. Garner†	244 Cal. App. 4th 1113	58
2013	Maral v. City of Live Oak†	221 Cal. App. 4th 975	53
2017	Fernandes v. Singh†	224 Cal. Rptr. 3d 751	49
2015	Siskiyou County Farm Bureau v. Department of Fish & Wildlife†	237 Cal. App. 4th 411	49
2013	Collins v. Navistar, Inc.· Concurrence†	214 Cal. App. 4th 1486	47
2013	Alameda County Flood Control & Water Conservation District v. Department of Water Resources†	213 Cal. App. 4th 1163	46
2018	People v. Burton†	241 Cal. Rptr. 3d 35	45

Showing the 15 most-cited of 101 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 Elena Jeannette Duarte on?: Elena Jeannette Duarte 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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15 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).