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 1919 / Served to 1967

John T. Nourse

Justice, California Court of Appeal

John T. Nourse was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1919. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1919–1967 · 48 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1919	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Nourse authored 1,725 published opinions for the court (1919–1967), plus 10 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: Boynton v. McKales (89 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. 316 of these were attributed to Nourse 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
1956	Boynton v. McKales	139 Cal. App. 2d 777	89
1958	People v. Teitelbaum	163 Cal. App. 2d 184	74
1961	Caryl Richards, Inc. v. Superior Court	188 Cal. App. 2d 300	67
1958	Kissinger v. City of Los Angeles	161 Cal. App. 2d 454	64
1953	Costa v. Regents of University of California	254 P.2d 85	62
1931	People v. Collier	295 P. 898	59
1959	Gascon v. Superior Court	169 Cal. App. 2d 356	56
1940	Estate of Davis	38 Cal. App. 2d 579	56
1938	Nolan v. Bank of America National Trust & Savings Ass'n†	25 Cal. App. 2d 738	55
1919	Moss v. H. R. Boynton Co.	186 P. 631	53
1953	Industrial Indemnity Co. v. Golden State Co.	117 Cal. App. 2d 519	49
1941	Sonnicksen v. Sonnicksen	45 Cal. App. 2d 46	49
1956	Trowbridge v. Superior Court· Dissent†	144 Cal. App. 2d 13	47
1951	People v. Gordon	105 Cal. App. 2d 711	47
1950	Alonso v. Hills	214 P.2d 50	47

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,741 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 T. Nourse on?: John T. Nourse was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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48 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).