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 1989 / Served to 2018

George Nicholson

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

George Nicholson was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1989. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1989–2018 · 28 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1989	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1990	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Nicholson authored 303 published opinions for the court (1990–2018), plus 8 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Bradford (185 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. 148 of these were attributed to Nicholson 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
2014	People v. Bradford· Concurrence†	227 Cal. App. 4th 1322	185
2011	People v. Urke†	197 Cal. App. 4th 766	148
2013	People v. Hendrix· Dissent†	214 Cal. App. 4th 216	147
2017	Pizarro v. Reynoso†	10 Cal. App. 5th 172	145
1996	People v. Honig· Concurrence†	48 Cal. App. 4th 289	137
2011	People v. Battle†	198 Cal. App. 4th 50	122
2005	People v. Carmony· Concurrence†	26 Cal. Rptr. 3d 365	116
2011	People v. Smith†	198 Cal. App. 4th 415	98
2014	El Dorado County Health & Human Services Agency v. J.S.†	230 Cal. App. 4th 1183	93
1998	People v. Chambers†	65 Cal. App. 4th 819	84
2005	Cicairos v. Summit Logistics, Inc.	35 Cal. Rptr. 3d 243	83
1996	In Re Luke L.	44 Cal. App. 4th 670	81
2016	People v. Relkin†	6 Cal. App. 5th 1188	79
2008	People v. Zepeda	167 Cal. App. 4th 25	75
2001	Dudley v. Department of Transportation	108 Cal. Rptr. 2d 739	73

Showing the 15 most-cited of 322 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 George Nicholson on?: George Nicholson was an Associate 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.

28 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).