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 1974 / Served to 1991

Harry W. Low

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

Harry W. Low was a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1974. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1974–1991 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1974	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1982	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Low authored 133 published opinions for the court (1978–1992), plus 2 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Estes (164 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. 16 of these were attributed to Low 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
1983	People v. Estes	147 Cal. App. 3d 23	164
1987	People v. Michael D.	188 Cal. App. 3d 1392	89
1986	Planned Parenthood Affiliates v. Van De Kamp	181 Cal. App. 3d 245	70
1991	People v. Salvato	234 Cal. App. 3d 872	68
1988	Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. v. Superior Court· Concurrence†	200 Cal. App. 3d 272	63
1988	People v. Czahara	203 Cal. App. 3d 1468	55
1990	Evans v. Eckelman	216 Cal. App. 3d 1609	54
1988	Stephens v. Coldwell Banker Commercial Group, Inc.	199 Cal. App. 3d 1394	50
1986	Martino v. Denevi	182 Cal. App. 3d 553	49
1985	Environmental Protection Information Center, Inc. v. Johnson	170 Cal. App. 3d 604	49
1992	In Re Monique T.	2 Cal. App. 4th 1372	45
1987	Evans v. Celotex Corp.	194 Cal. App. 3d 741	43
1987	People v. Loudermilk	195 Cal. App. 3d 996	41
1989	People v. Dollar Rent-A-Car Systems, Inc.	211 Cal. App. 3d 119	40
1983	Pisano v. American Leasing	146 Cal. App. 3d 194	40

Showing the 15 most-cited of 137 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 Harry W. Low on?: Harry W. Low was a Presiding 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

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17 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).