How do judges of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is presidential appointment.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals / Joined 1970 / Served to 1997

John G. Penn

Judge, District of Columbia Court of Appeals

John G. Penn was a Judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1970. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1970–1997 · 27 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1970	District of Columbia Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Boston University

Judicial Record

In our data, Penn authored 1 published opinion for the court (1979). Most cited: Beck v. United States (14 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.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1979	Beck v. United States	402 A.2d 418	14

Showing the 1 most-cited of 1 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 District of Columbia Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is presidential appointment.
Which court was John G. Penn on?: John G. Penn was a Judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

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27 years on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).