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 1959 / Served to 1977

John J. Ford

Justice, California Court of Appeal

John J. Ford was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1959. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1959–1977 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1959	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Ford authored 301 published opinions for the court (1959–1982), plus 3 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Day v. Sharp (64 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. 50 of these were attributed to Ford 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
1975	Day v. Sharp	50 Cal. App. 3d 904	64
1977	People v. Burden· Dissent†	72 Cal. App. 3d 603	54
1969	Susman v. City of Los Angeles	269 Cal. App. 2d 803	52
1963	People v. Bernhardt	222 Cal. App. 2d 567	51
1977	People v. Vallerga	67 Cal. App. 3d 847	50
1961	Werner v. Times-Mirror Co.	193 Cal. App. 2d 111	43
1963	People v. Finch· Concurrence†	213 Cal. App. 2d 752	42
1967	People v. Prochnau	251 Cal. App. 2d 22	39
1977	Arauz v. Gerhardt	68 Cal. App. 3d 937	36
1961	People v. Harris	191 Cal. App. 2d 754	35
1960	People v. Ransome	180 Cal. App. 2d 140	35
1962	Varas v. Barco Manufacturing Co.	205 Cal. App. 2d 246	34
1982	People v. Jesse F.	137 Cal. App. 3d 164	33
1960	People v. Montano	184 Cal. App. 2d 199	32
1975	Eckl v. Davis	51 Cal. App. 3d 831	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 308 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 J. Ford on?: John J. Ford 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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18 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).