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 1913 / Served to 1963

John E. Richards

Justice, California Court of Appeal

John E. Richards was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1913. They previously served on the Supreme Court of California. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1856 · age 170
Tenure: 1913–1963 · 50 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1913	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1924	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1957	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Richards authored 428 published opinions for the court (1915–1960), plus 9 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Smellie v. Southern Pacific Co. (263 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. 12 of these were attributed to Richards 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
1931	Smellie v. Southern Pacific Co.· Dissent	299 P. 529	263
1930	People v. Howard· Dissent	295 P. 333	143
1925	McGuinness v. Superior Court	237 P. 42	100
1929	State Bar of California v. Superior Court	278 P. 432	93
1931	Watson v. Division of Motor Vehicles· Concurrence	298 P. 481	83
1926	Herminghaus v. Southern California Edison Co.	252 P. 607	82
1922	People v. Merchants Protective Corp.	209 P. 363	82
1928	Gray v. Hall· Concurrence	265 P. 246	78
1924	In Re Daedler	228 P. 467	76
1928	People v. Leong Fook	273 P. 779	68
1923	Wright v. Jordan	221 P. 915	61
1926	Stewart v. Stewart	249 P. 197	60
1928	Collier v. Lindley	266 P. 526	54
1918	Bancroft v. Bancroft	173 P. 582	54
1931	People v. Perry	298 P. 19	53

Showing the 15 most-cited of 442 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 John E. Richards on?: John E. Richards 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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50 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).