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 1966 / Served to 1984

Joseph A. Rattigan

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Joseph A. Rattigan was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1966. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1966–1984 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1966	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Rattigan authored 147 published opinions for the court (1967–1984), plus 11 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Peter W. v. San Francisco Unified School District (152 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. 29 of these were attributed to Rattigan 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
1976	Peter W. v. San Francisco Unified School District	60 Cal. App. 3d 814	152
1970	People v. Newton	8 Cal. App. 3d 359	89
1979	People v. Anjell	100 Cal. App. 3d 189	76
1976	Mandel v. Hodges	54 Cal. App. 3d 596	76
1968	Fletcher v. A. J. Industries, Inc.	266 Cal. App. 2d 313	71
1979	Ghent v. Superior Court	90 Cal. App. 3d 944	69
1969	Knoff v. City & County of San Francisco	1 Cal. App. 3d 184	69
1981	Walter Camp v. Board of Supervisors	123 Cal. App. 3d 334	68
1976	In Re Fain	65 Cal. App. 3d 376	54
1967	Scruggs v. Haynes	252 Cal. App. 2d 256	48
1969	McClaflin v. Bayshore Equipment Rental Co.	274 Cal. App. 2d 446	46
1978	Sawyer v. Bank of America· Concurrence†	83 Cal. App. 3d 135	45
1976	People v. Adams· Dissent†	59 Cal. App. 3d 559	43
1970	City of Sausalito v. County of Marin	12 Cal. App. 3d 550	43
1977	Harland v. State of California· Concurrence†	75 Cal. App. 3d 475	41

Showing the 15 most-cited of 162 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 Joseph A. Rattigan on?: Joseph A. Rattigan was an Associate 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

17 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).