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 1981 / Active

Elwood G. H. Lui

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

Elwood G. H. Lui is a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), serving since 1981. He previously served on the Municipal Court of California, County of Los Angeles. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 1981 · 45 yrs
Education: University of California-Los Angeles

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1975	Municipal Court of California, County of Los Angeles	–	–
1981	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2015	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2017	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2018	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of California-Los Angeles	Business Administration
University of California-Los Angeles	Business Administration	1962
University of California-Los Angeles	Business Administration	1964
University of California-Los Angeles		1969

Judicial Record

In our data, Lui authored 117 published opinions for the court (1981–2019), plus 5 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Franklin (129 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. 73 of these were attributed to Lui 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
2016	People v. Franklin†	248 Cal. App. 4th 938	129
1987	Jones v. Grewe· Dissent†	189 Cal. App. 3d 950	93
2016	People v. Weddington†	246 Cal. App. 4th 468	85
2018	People v. McVey†	233 Cal. Rptr. 3d 915	72
2018	Bel Air Internet, LLC v. Morales†	230 Cal. Rptr. 3d 71	72
2016	Rice v. Downs†	248 Cal. App. 4th 175	60
2016	Markow v. Rosner†	3 Cal. App. 5th 1027	50
2019	Key v. Tyler†	246 Cal. Rptr. 3d 224	49
1983	McMahan's of Santa Monica v. City of Santa Monica	146 Cal. App. 3d 683	49
1985	Bogard v. Employers Casualty Co.	164 Cal. App. 3d 602	46
2018	People v. Yates†	235 Cal. Rptr. 3d 756	45
2018	Swain v. Swain (In re Swain)†	230 Cal. Rptr. 3d 614	44
2015	People v. Denard†	242 Cal. App. 4th 1012	41
1987	Carden v. Getzoff	190 Cal. App. 3d 907	41
1987	Coates v. Newhall Land & Farming, Inc.	191 Cal. App. 3d 1	39

Showing the 15 most-cited of 127 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 Elwood G. H. Lui on?: Elwood G. H. Lui is a Presiding 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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45 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).