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 1945 / Served to 1985

Emmet H. Wilson

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Emmet H. Wilson was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1945. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1945–1985 · 39 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1945	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Wilson authored 318 published opinions for the court (1945–1978), plus 6 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: Berry v. Chaplin (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. 91 of these were attributed to Wilson 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
1946	Berry v. Chaplin†	74 Cal. App. 2d 669	117
1946	Berry v. Chaplin	74 Cal. App. 2d 652	108
1949	People v. Beltran	94 Cal. App. 2d 197	64
1947	Lifton v. Harshman	80 Cal. App. 2d 422	60
1950	People v. Wochnick	98 Cal. App. 2d 124	59
1946	Shapiro v. Equitable Life Assurance Society†	76 Cal. App. 2d 75	58
1949	People v. Klinkenberg	90 Cal. App. 2d 608	57
1945	Buckhantz v. R. G. Hamilton & Co.	71 Cal. App. 2d 777	55
1948	Paradise v. Nowlin	86 Cal. App. 2d 897	47
1947	Southern California Enterprises, Inc. v. D. N. & E. Walter & Co.	78 Cal. App. 2d 750	47
1947	Fitzgerald v. Herzer	78 Cal. App. 2d 127	45
1946	Arnold v. Arnold	76 Cal. App. 2d 877	45
1946	Childers v. Childers	74 Cal. App. 2d 56	45
1951	In Re Keddy· Concurrence†	233 P.2d 159	41
1949	Air Transport Manufacturing Co. v. Employers' Liability Assurance Corp.†	91 Cal. App. 2d 129	40

Showing the 15 most-cited of 335 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 Emmet H. Wilson on?: Emmet H. Wilson 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

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39 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).