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 1972 / Served to 1984

Gordon Cologne

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Gordon Cologne was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1972. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1924 · age 102
Tenure: 1972–1984 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1972	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Cologne authored 114 published opinions for the court (1972–1984), plus 9 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Keene v. Wiggins (66 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. 26 of these were attributed to Cologne 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
1977	Keene v. Wiggins	69 Cal. App. 3d 308	66
1981	People v. McIntyre	115 Cal. App. 3d 899	56
1981	Copley v. Copley	126 Cal. App. 3d 248	55
1981	People v. Epps	122 Cal. App. 3d 691	50
1977	Gray v. Reeves	76 Cal. App. 3d 567	49
1979	Commercial Standard Title Co. v. Superior Court· Concurrence†	92 Cal. App. 3d 934	43
1979	In Re Nicole B.	93 Cal. App. 3d 874	42
1978	City Council v. McKinley	80 Cal. App. 3d 204	40
1982	City of Chula Vista v. Superior Court	133 Cal. App. 3d 472	38
1973	Vitek, Inc. v. Alvarado Ice Palace, Inc.	34 Cal. App. 3d 586	38
1982	People v. Ibarra	134 Cal. App. 3d 413	36
1979	Mabee v. Nurseryland Garden Centers, Inc.· Dissent†	88 Cal. App. 3d 420	36
1976	Mobil Oil Corp. v. Superior Court	59 Cal. App. 3d 293	36
1976	Esparza v. Specht	55 Cal. App. 3d 1	31
1984	People v. Munoz· Concurrence†	157 Cal. App. 3d 999	30

Showing the 15 most-cited of 130 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 Gordon Cologne on?: Gordon Cologne 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.

12 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).