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 2018 / Active

Gordon Bruce Burns

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Gordon Bruce Burns is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2018. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2018 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2018	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of California-Los Angeles		1988
UC Law San Francisco		1994

Judicial Record

In our data, Burns authored 1 published opinion for the court (2019). Most cited: Rel v. Pac. Bell Mobile Servs. (17 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. 1 of these was attributed to Burns 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
2019	Rel v. Pac. Bell Mobile Servs.†	245 Cal. Rptr. 3d 490	17

Showing the 1 most-cited of 1 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 Gordon Bruce Burns on?: Gordon Bruce Burns is 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.

7 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).