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 1979 / Served to 1996

Jerome A. Smith

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Jerome A. Smith was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1979. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1979–1996 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Smith authored 166 published opinions for the court (1978–1996), plus 4 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Ladas v. California State Automobile Ass'n (174 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. 17 of these were attributed to Smith 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
1993	Ladas v. California State Automobile Ass'n	19 Cal. App. 4th 761	174
1990	Norman I. Krug Real Estate Investments, Inc. v. Praszker	220 Cal. App. 3d 35	131
1986	Citizens Against Rent Control v. City of Berkeley	181 Cal. App. 3d 213	82
1980	Leaf v. City of San Mateo	104 Cal. App. 3d 398	79
1988	Kendall v. Barker	197 Cal. App. 3d 619	72
1987	Seeley v. Seymour	190 Cal. App. 3d 844	72
1987	People v. Reilly	196 Cal. App. 3d 1127	61
1992	Garrick Development Co. v. Hayward Unified School District	3 Cal. App. 4th 320	60
1990	Biljac Associates v. First Interstate Bank of Oregon	218 Cal. App. 3d 1410	57
1993	Wilson v. Century 21 Great Western Realty	15 Cal. App. 4th 298	54
1983	Armstrong v. County of San Mateo· Dissent†	146 Cal. App. 3d 597	51
1981	Parnell v. Superior Court	119 Cal. App. 3d 392	45
1996	Campanelli v. Regents of University of California	44 Cal. App. 4th 572	42
1988	People v. Holifield	205 Cal. App. 3d 993	42
1980	People v. Clem	104 Cal. App. 3d 337	40

Showing the 15 most-cited of 174 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 Jerome A. Smith on?: Jerome A. Smith 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).