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 1966 / Served to 1988

Jay R. Ballantyne

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Jay R. Ballantyne was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1966. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1926 · age 100
Tenure: 1966–1988 · 22 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1966	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1986	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Ballantyne authored 42 published opinions for the court (1980–1988). Most cited: People v. Van Hoek (57 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. 4 of these were attributed to Ballantyne 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
1988	People v. Van Hoek	200 Cal. App. 3d 811	57
1988	Allied Grape Growers v. Bronco Wine Co.	203 Cal. App. 3d 432	38
1987	Mosesian v. Pennwalt Corp.	191 Cal. App. 3d 851	38
1986	People v. Lopez	188 Cal. App. 3d 592	37
1988	People v. Atkins	203 Cal. App. 3d 15	33
1987	Dilts v. Cantua Elementary School District	189 Cal. App. 3d 27	33
1980	People v. Williams	102 Cal. App. 3d 1018	31
1986	In Re Marriage of Goodarzirad	185 Cal. App. 3d 1020	30
1987	Ceja v. J. R. Wood, Inc.	196 Cal. App. 3d 1372	27
1987	People v. Diaz	195 Cal. App. 3d 1375	23
1988	People v. Martinez	197 Cal. App. 3d 767	22
1988	Security Pacific National Bank v. Geernaert	199 Cal. App. 3d 1425	20
1980	People v. Morgan	101 Cal. App. 3d 523	20
1980	People v. Hinojosa	103 Cal. App. 3d 57	19
1987	People v. Smith	188 Cal. App. 3d 1495	18

Showing the 15 most-cited of 42 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 Jay R. Ballantyne on?: Jay R. Ballantyne 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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22 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).