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 1937 / Served to 1953

Jess E. Stephens

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Jess E. Stephens was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1937. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1882–1953
Tenure: 1937–1953 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1937	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Stanford University

Judicial Record

In our data, Stephens authored 13 published opinions for the court (1942–1952), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Ehlen v. Burrows (29 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. 2 of these were attributed to Stephens 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
1942	Ehlen v. Burrows	51 Cal. App. 2d 141	29
1952	Los Angeles Finance Co. v. Flores	110 Cal. App. Supp. 2d 850	18
1942	Miller v. Miller†	52 Cal. App. 2d 443	13
1942	Kallmeyer v. Poore	52 Cal. App. 2d 142	13
1947	People v. Duffy· Dissent†	79 Cal. App. Supp. 2d 875	10
1942	Rankins v. Rankins	52 Cal. App. 2d 231	9
1942	Kuhlemeier v. Lack	50 Cal. App. 2d 802	9
1942	Exchange National Bank of Tulsa v. Ransom	52 Cal. App. 2d 544	8
1950	Finley v. Winkler	222 P.2d 345	7
1942	Hunt v. Pacific Electric Railway Co.	51 Cal. App. 2d 11	5
1942	Barr v. Mountjoy	50 Cal. App. 2d 40	5
1951	Bilich v. Barnett	103 Cal. App. Supp. 2d 921	4
1942	LeGrand v. Russell	52 Cal. App. 2d 279	4
1942	Clark v. Abrams	49 Cal. App. 2d 497	1

Showing the 14 most-cited of 14 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 Jess E. Stephens on?: Jess E. Stephens was a 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).