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 1985 / Served to 2001

James F. Thaxter

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

James F. Thaxter was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1985. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1933 · age 93
Tenure: 1985–2001 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1985	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1990	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Thaxter authored 133 published opinions for the court (1987–2001). Most cited: In Re Christopher H. (213 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. 20 of these were attributed to Thaxter 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
1996	In Re Christopher H.	50 Cal. App. 4th 1001	213
2000	Desiree F. v. Daniel F.	99 Cal. Rptr. 2d 688	205
1996	People v. Cooper	43 Cal. App. 4th 815	109
2000	Kendall-Jackson Winery, Ltd. v. Superior Court	90 Cal. Rptr. 2d 743	106
1998	Silva v. Lucky Stores, Inc.	76 Cal. Rptr. 2d 382	80
2001	In Re Sara D.	104 Cal. Rptr. 2d 909	74
1992	Grant v. List & Lathrop	2 Cal. App. 4th 993	72
1995	Nordquist v. McGraw-Hill Broadcasting Co.	32 Cal. App. 4th 555	71
1999	People v. Pena	88 Cal. Rptr. 2d 656	61
1993	Responsible Citizens v. SUPERIOR COURT OF FRESNO CTY.	16 Cal. App. 4th 1717	61
1993	Western Growers Insurance v. Workers' Compensation Appeals Board	16 Cal. App. 4th 227	61
1999	Doran v. Magan†	76 Cal. App. 4th 1287	58
1999	People v. Ramirez	83 Cal. Rptr. 2d 882	57
1998	People v. Shaw	64 Cal. App. 4th 492	54
1996	Michaelian v. State Compensation Insurance Fund	50 Cal. App. 4th 1093	53

Showing the 15 most-cited of 133 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 F. Thaxter on?: James F. Thaxter 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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16 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).