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 2006 / Active

Jennifer Rae Steding Detjen

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Jennifer Rae Steding Detjen is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2006. She previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Madera. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2006 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2001	Superior Court of California, County of Madera	–	–
2005	Superior Court of California, County of Madera	–	–
2006	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2010	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of Washington-Seattle Campus	Political Science	1977
University of San Diego		1981

Judicial Record

In our data, Detjen authored 57 published opinions for the court (2002–2019), plus 2 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Osuna (253 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. 58 of these were attributed to Detjen 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
2014	People v. Osuna†	225 Cal. App. 4th 1020	253
2014	People v. Blakely†	225 Cal. App. 4th 1042	197
2012	People v. Cruz†	207 Cal. App. 4th 664	123
2012	People v. Ellis†	207 Cal. App. 4th 1546	119
2019	People v. Tirado†	251 Cal. Rptr. 3d 412	114
2014	People v. Superior Court†	225 Cal. App. 4th 1007	77
2014	People v. Superior Court†	225 Cal. App. 4th 979	58
2014	People v. Palafox†	231 Cal. App. 4th 68	52
2016	People v. Buford†	4 Cal. App. 5th 886	45
2019	People v. Hargis†	244 Cal. Rptr. 3d 745	40
2012	People v. Delgado†	210 Cal. App. 4th 761	36
2016	People v. Ruff†	198 Cal. Rptr. 3d 704	35
2017	O'Neal v. Stanislaus County Employees' Retirement Assn.†	8 Cal. App. 5th 1184	31
2015	People v. Jimenez†	242 Cal. App. 4th 1337	29
2017	California State University, Fresno Ass'n v. County of Fresno†	9 Cal. App. 5th 250	28

Showing the 15 most-cited of 59 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 Jennifer Rae Steding Detjen on?: Jennifer Rae Steding Detjen is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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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).