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 1983 / Served to 1995

Howard M. Dabney

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Howard M. Dabney was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1983. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1983–1995 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1987	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Dabney authored 107 published opinions for the court (1988–1995), plus 1 concurrence. Most cited: People v. Harlan (117 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. 108 of these were attributed to Dabney 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
1990	People v. Harlan†	222 Cal. App. 3d 439	117
1990	People v. Ratcliff†	223 Cal. App. 3d 1401	106
1991	San Bernardino County Department of Public Social Services v. Servando M.†	232 Cal. App. 3d 553	89
1993	People v. Foster†	14 Cal. App. 4th 939	82
1994	People v. Guinn†	28 Cal. App. 4th 1130	74
1993	General Motors Corp. v. Superior Court†	12 Cal. App. 4th 435	63
1992	People v. Fitzpatrick†	2 Cal. App. 4th 1285	58
1993	People v. Asean D.†	14 Cal. App. 4th 467	55
1990	People v. Boyd†	222 Cal. App. 3d 541	55
1995	Masters v. San Bernardino County Employees Retirement Ass'n†	32 Cal. App. 4th 30	52
1993	People v. Eastman†	13 Cal. App. 4th 668	50
1993	People v. Rivers†	20 Cal. App. 4th 1040	44
1994	People v. Lee†	28 Cal. App. 4th 1724	42
1994	Davis v. Consolidated Freightways†	29 Cal. App. 4th 354	41
1992	People v. Ivans†	2 Cal. App. 4th 1654	39

Showing the 15 most-cited of 108 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 Howard M. Dabney on?: Howard M. Dabney was 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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12 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).