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 1985 / Served to 1996

Herbert W. Walker

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Herbert W. Walker was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1985. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1985–1996 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1985	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Walker authored 34 published opinions for the court (1989–2001). Most cited: People v. Melhado (175 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.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1998	People v. Melhado	60 Cal. App. 4th 1529	175
1997	Edwards v. Centex Real Estate Corp.	53 Cal. App. 4th 15	175
1998	Day v. AT & T CORP.	74 Cal. Rptr. 2d 55	139
1997	People v. De Soto	54 Cal. App. 4th 1	70
1999	County of Solano v. Vallejo Redevelopment Agency	90 Cal. Rptr. 2d 41	56
1998	Tusher v. Gabrielsen	80 Cal. Rptr. 2d 126	47
2001	Estate of Bibb	104 Cal. Rptr. 2d 415	36
2001	Darrel Franklin v. USX Corp.	105 Cal. Rptr. 2d 11	30
1999	Kelsey v. Waste Management	90 Cal. Rptr. 2d 510	30
1996	Ericsson Ge Mobile Communications, Inc. v. C.S.I. Telecommunications Engineers	49 Cal. App. 4th 1591	30
1997	Havstad v. Fidelity National Title Ins. Co.	58 Cal. App. 4th 654	29
1998	People v. Gokey	62 Cal. App. 4th 932	26
1999	Keimer v. Buena Vista Books, Inc.	89 Cal. Rptr. 2d 781	22
1999	Chaknova v. Wilbur-Ellis Co.	81 Cal. Rptr. 2d 871	18
1996	People v. Rochelle B.	49 Cal. App. 4th 1212	16

Showing the 15 most-cited of 34 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 W. Walker on?: Herbert W. Walker 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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11 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).