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 1926 / Served to 1932

Ira Thompson

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Ira Thompson was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1926. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1926–1932 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1926	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Thompson authored 140 published opinions for the court (1926–1928), plus 1 dissent and 1 concurrence. Most cited: People v. McKee (43 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. 63 of these were attributed to Thompson 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
1926	People v. McKee	251 P. 675	43
1927	Hoffman v. Southern Pacific Co.	258 P. 397	33
1927	Olschewski v. Hudson	262 P. 43	29
1928	People v. Edenburg	263 P. 857	27
1928	Blalock v. Ridgway†	267 P. 713	25
1928	Matthiessen v. Grand†	268 P. 675	24
1927	Davis v. Tanner	262 P. 1106	24
1927	Gas Appliance Sales Co. v. W. B. Bastian Manufacturing Co.	262 P. 452	23
1927	Hudson v. Von Hamm	259 P. 374	23
1927	Wilson v. Mattei	258 P. 453	23
1926	Clavey v. Loney	251 P. 232	23
1928	England v. Lyon Fireproof Storage Co.†	271 P. 532	22
1927	Dale v. Dale	262 P. 339	22
1928	People v. Nikolich†	269 P. 721	21
1928	People v. Adams†	267 P. 906	21

Showing the 15 most-cited of 142 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 Ira Thompson on?: Ira Thompson 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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6 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).