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 1964 / Served to 1991

John T. Racanelli

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

John T. Racanelli was a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1964. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1964–1991 · 26 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1964	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1977	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Racanelli authored 195 published opinions for the court (1977–1991), plus 3 dissents and 17 concurrences. Most cited: Kruse v. Bank of America (127 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. 56 of these were attributed to Racanelli 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
1988	Kruse v. Bank of America	202 Cal. App. 3d 38	127
1986	United States v. State Water Resources Control Board†	182 Cal. App. 3d 82	106
1985	Troensegaard v. Silvercrest Industries, Inc.· Concurrence†	175 Cal. App. 3d 218	76
1977	People v. Watson	75 Cal. App. 3d 384	67
1978	In Re Heidi T.	87 Cal. App. 3d 864	64
1981	Davis v. Damrell	119 Cal. App. 3d 883	63
1987	Resource Defense Fund v. Local Agency Formation Commission	191 Cal. App. 3d 886	56
1983	Guardianship of Phillip B.	139 Cal. App. 3d 407	54
1980	People v. Gregory S.· Dissent†	112 Cal. App. 3d 764	47
1978	Tiedemann v. Superior Court	83 Cal. App. 3d 918	45
1978	Killian v. City and County of San Francisco	77 Cal. App. 3d 1	42
1979	People v. Flores	100 Cal. App. 3d 221	38
1986	Santa Clara Department of Social Services v. Cecilia M.	177 Cal. App. 3d 915	37
1990	Moyer v. Amador Valley J. Union High Sch. Dist.	225 Cal. App. 3d 720	35
1984	Costa v. Superior Court	157 Cal. App. 3d 673	33

Showing the 15 most-cited of 215 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. Racanelli on?: John T. Racanelli was a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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26 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).