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 2012 / Active

James Michael Humes

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

James Michael Humes is a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2012. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2012 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2012	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2014	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2018	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Illinois State University		1980
University of Denver		1983
University of Colorado Boulder	Social Science	1993

Judicial Record

In our data, Humes authored 75 published opinions for the court (2013–2019), plus 2 concurrences. Most cited: People v. McDaniels (257 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. 77 of these were attributed to Humes 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
2018	People v. McDaniels†	231 Cal. Rptr. 3d 443	257
2014	San Francisco Human Services Agency v. Karen R.†	227 Cal. App. 4th 1147	195
2014	People v. Millbrook†	222 Cal. App. 4th 1122	193
2016	Alameda County Social Services Agency v. A.A.†	245 Cal. App. 4th 53	184
2019	In re Taylor†	246 Cal. Rptr. 3d 342	132
2014	Sonoma County Human Services Department v. Y.M.†	226 Cal. App. 4th 128	94
2017	Cornell v. Berkeley Tennis Club†	227 Cal. Rptr. 3d 286	80
2016	People v. P.O.†	246 Cal. App. 4th 288	76
2015	Ram v. OneWest Bank, FSB· Concurrence†	234 Cal. App. 4th 1	71
2014	Tiri v. Lucky Chances, Inc.†	226 Cal. App. 4th 231	68
2013	San Francisco Human Services Agency v. A.G.†	217 Cal. App. 4th 1080	61
2015	People v. Wright· Concurrence†	242 Cal. App. 4th 1461	57
2015	People v. Saez†	237 Cal. App. 4th 1177	53
2014	People v. Fiore†	227 Cal. App. 4th 1362	49
2015	People v. Peau†	236 Cal. App. 4th 823	46

Showing the 15 most-cited of 77 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 is James Michael Humes on?: James Michael Humes is a Presiding 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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13 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).