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 1954 / Served to 1987

Herbert C. Kaufman

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Herbert C. Kaufman was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1954. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1954–1987 · 33 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1954	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Kaufman authored 683 published opinions for the court (1950–1987), plus 11 dissents and 19 concurrences. Most cited: Fletcher v. Western National Life Insurance (412 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. 124 of these were attributed to Kaufman 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
1970	Fletcher v. Western National Life Insurance	10 Cal. App. 3d 376	412
1971	Kachig v. Boothe	22 Cal. App. 3d 626	130
1977	People v. Lopez· Concurrence†	71 Cal. App. 3d 568	128
1958	People v. Harvey	156 Cal. App. 2d 516	103
1978	Lewin v. St. Joseph Hospital of Orange	82 Cal. App. 3d 368	98
1972	In Re Marriage of Rosan	24 Cal. App. 3d 885	92
1976	Merlo v. Standard Life & Accident Insurance	59 Cal. App. 3d 5	85
1986	Koehrer v. Superior Court	181 Cal. App. 3d 1155	75
1978	Murphy v. Allstate Insurance	83 Cal. App. 3d 38	75
1977	Brokopp v. Ford Motor Co.	71 Cal. App. 3d 841	74
1978	Lemelle v. Superior Court	77 Cal. App. 3d 148	73
1972	Strutt v. Ontario Savings & Loan Ass'n	28 Cal. App. 3d 866	73
1986	Izzi v. Mesquite Country Club	186 Cal. App. 3d 1309	71
1978	Northwestern Mut. Ins. Co. v. Farmers Ins. Group	76 Cal. App. 3d 1031	69
1977	Little v. Stuyvesant Life Ins. Co.	67 Cal. App. 3d 451	67

Showing the 15 most-cited of 713 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 Herbert C. Kaufman on?: Herbert C. Kaufman was a 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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33 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).