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 1972 / Served to 1987

James H. Hastings

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

James H. Hastings was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1972. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1972–1987 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1972	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1973	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Hastings authored 266 published opinions for the court (1973–1988), plus 2 concurrences. Most cited: Norton v. Hines (88 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. 28 of these were attributed to Hastings 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
1975	Norton v. Hines	49 Cal. App. 3d 917	88
1978	St. Paul Fire & Marine Insurance v. Coss	80 Cal. App. 3d 888	86
1979	People v. Jaramillo	98 Cal. App. 3d 830	80
1976	Laks v. Coast Federal Savings & Loan Ass'n	60 Cal. App. 3d 885	72
1978	Gilbert Financial Corp v. Steelform Contracting Co.	82 Cal. App. 3d 65	71
1984	Bartling v. Superior Court	163 Cal. App. 3d 186	57
1983	People v. Bloom	142 Cal. App. 3d 310	55
1977	Vasey v. California Dance Co.	70 Cal. App. 3d 742	55
1984	Kathleen K. v. Robert B.	150 Cal. App. 3d 992	47
1985	Herbert v. Superior Court	169 Cal. App. 3d 718	44
1975	Bartalo v. Superior Court	51 Cal. App. 3d 526	43
1977	Dujardin v. Ventura County Gen. Hosp.	69 Cal. App. 3d 350	39
1975	In Re Marriage of Imperato	45 Cal. App. 3d 432	38
1974	Kirkpatrick v. Clarence B.	37 Cal. App. 3d 676	37
1977	Beneficial Standard Properties, Inc. v. Scharps	67 Cal. App. 3d 227	36

Showing the 15 most-cited of 268 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 H. Hastings on?: James H. Hastings 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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15 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).