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 1969 / Served to 1988

James B. Scott

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

James B. Scott was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1969. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1969–1988 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1969	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1974	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Scott authored 258 published opinions for the court (1941–1987), plus 13 dissents and 9 concurrences. Most cited: McKinney v. County of Santa Clara (94 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. 40 of these were attributed to Scott 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
1980	McKinney v. County of Santa Clara	110 Cal. App. 3d 787	94
1983	Barbara A. v. John G.· Dissent†	145 Cal. App. 3d 369	93
1985	People v. Stewart	171 Cal. App. 3d 59	88
1984	Allstate Insurance v. Kim W.	160 Cal. App. 3d 326	79
1986	Travelers Insurance v. Lesher	187 Cal. App. 3d 169	76
1982	People v. Sergill	138 Cal. App. 3d 34	76
1981	Barnhill v. Robert Saunders & Co.	125 Cal. App. 3d 1	67
1984	Cochran v. Herzog Engraving Co.	155 Cal. App. 3d 405	61
1980	Mavroudis v. Superior Court	102 Cal. App. 3d 594	58
1977	People v. Watts	67 Cal. App. 3d 173	55
1979	People v. McNeal	90 Cal. App. 3d 830	52
1981	Community Cause v. Boatwright	124 Cal. App. 3d 888	51
1985	Craven v. Crout	163 Cal. App. 3d 779	47
1980	Duarte v. City of San Jose	100 Cal. App. 3d 648	44
1985	Wallace v. Consumers Cooperative of Berkeley, Inc.	170 Cal. App. 3d 836	43

Showing the 15 most-cited of 280 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 James B. Scott on?: James B. Scott 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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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).