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 2007 / Active

Henry Earl Needham Jr.

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Henry Earl Needham Jr. is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2007. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2007 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2007	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Fisk University		1965
Alliant International University		1979

Judicial Record

In our data, Needham authored 91 published opinions for the court (1923–2019), plus 1 dissent and 4 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Morrison (181 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. 54 of these were attributed to Needham 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	People v. Morrison†	245 Cal. Rptr. 3d 849	181
2010	Alameda County Social Services Agency v. S.O.†	190 Cal. App. 4th 1119	140
2010	Haight Ashbury Free Clinics, Inc. v. Happening House Ventures· Concurrence†	184 Cal. App. 4th 1539	132
2012	Ajamian v. Cantorco2e. L.P.†	203 Cal. App. 4th 771	128
2011	Wallace v. McCubbin†	196 Cal. App. 4th 1169	125
2013	Intengan v. BAC Home Loans Servicing LP†	214 Cal. App. 4th 1047	113
2013	Scott v. JPMorgan Chase Bank†	214 Cal. App. 4th 743	109
2012	Ayyad v. Sprint Spectrum†	210 Cal. App. 4th 851	82
2010	Scheherezade Sharabianlou v. Karp	181 Cal. App. 4th 1133	63
2007	Rowe v. Exline	63 Cal. Rptr. 3d 787	60
2010	Lucky United Properties Investment, Inc. v. Lee	185 Cal. App. 4th 125	57
2010	People v. Bradford	187 Cal. App. 4th 1345	47
2008	Schaffer v. City and County of San Francisco	168 Cal. App. 4th 992	41
2012	People v. Durant†	205 Cal. App. 4th 57	40
2008	Northwest Energetic Services, LLC v. California Franchise Tax Board	71 Cal. Rptr. 3d 642	37

Showing the 15 most-cited of 96 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 Henry Earl Needham Jr. on?: Henry Earl Needham Jr. 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

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19 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).