How do judges of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is presidential appointment.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals / Joined 1979 / Former Judge

Frank E. Schwelb

Judge, District of Columbia Court of Appeals

Frank E. Schwelb was a Judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1979. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1979 · 47 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	District of Columbia Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Schwelb authored 712 published opinions for the court (1981–2014), plus 50 dissents and 115 concurrences. Most cited: In Re Goldsborough (269 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. 560 of these were attributed to Schwelb 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
1995	In Re Goldsborough†	654 A.2d 1285	269
1990	Matter of Addams· Dissent†	579 A.2d 190	255
2009	Tsintolas Realty Co. v. Mendez†	984 A.2d 181	239
1989	Irick v. United States	565 A.2d 26	211
1988	Thompson v. United States†	546 A.2d 414	172
1989	Hercules & Co. v. Shama Restaurant Corp.	566 A.2d 31	164
1993	Etheredge v. District of Columbia	635 A.2d 908	157
1994	Colbert v. Georgetown University†	641 A.2d 469	154
1998	Homan v. Goyal†	711 A.2d 812	152
2006	Wilson-Bey v. United States†	903 A.2d 818	149
1997	Carl v. Children's Hospital· Concurrence†	702 A.2d 159	140
1989	Parreco v. District of Columbia Rental Housing Commission†	567 A.2d 43	134
1991	Brown v. United States†	590 A.2d 1008	133
1998	Wallace v. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom	715 A.2d 873	131
1991	Beard v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.†	587 A.2d 195	127

Showing the 15 most-cited of 878 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 District of Columbia Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is presidential appointment.
Which court was Frank E. Schwelb on?: Frank E. Schwelb was a Judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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