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

Halim Dhanidina

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Halim Dhanidina is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2018. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1973 · age 53
Tenure: Since 2018 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2012	Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles	–	–
2018	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Pomona College	International Relations	1994
University of California-Los Angeles		1997

Judicial Record

In our data, Dhanidina authored 4 published opinions for the court (2018–2019). Most cited: In re Jenson (26 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. 4 of these were attributed to Dhanidina 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
2018	In re Jenson†	233 Cal. Rptr. 3d 868	26
2019	John Doe v. Occidental Coll.†	249 Cal. Rptr. 3d 889	15
2019	Cal. Charter Sch. Ass'n v. City of Huntington Park†	247 Cal. Rptr. 3d 412	5
2019	Mass v. Franchise Tax Bd.†	251 Cal. Rptr. 3d 279	3

Showing the 4 most-cited of 4 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 Halim Dhanidina on?: Halim Dhanidina is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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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).