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 2009 / Active

Kathleen M. Banke

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Kathleen M. Banke is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), serving since 2009. She previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Alameda. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1953 · age 73
Tenure: Since 2009 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2006	Superior Court of California, County of Alameda	–	–
2009	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

California State University-Sacramento		1974
University of Colorado Boulder		1979

Judicial Record

In our data, Banke authored 50 published opinions for the court (2010–2019), plus 1 dissent and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Bently Reserve LP v. Papaliolios (78 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 Banke 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
2013	Bently Reserve LP v. Papaliolios†	218 Cal. App. 4th 418	78
2015	People v. Saez· Concurrence†	237 Cal. App. 4th 1177	53
2017	Farrar v. Direct Commerce, Inc.†	9 Cal. App. 5th 1257	51
2011	Citizens for East Shore Parks v. State Lands Commission†	202 Cal. App. 4th 549	42
2015	People v. Braslaw†	233 Cal. App. 4th 1239	40
2012	Rony v. Costa†	210 Cal. App. 4th 746	37
2011	Larson v. City & County of San Francisco†	192 Cal. App. 4th 1263	35
2015	Shiffer v. CBS Corp.†	240 Cal. App. 4th 246	32
2011	City of Scotts Valley v. County of Santa Cruz†	201 Cal. App. 4th 1	30
2012	Bernard v. City of Oakland†	202 Cal. App. 4th 1553	28
2014	Pierce v. San Mateo County Sheriff's Department†	232 Cal. App. 4th 995	27
2018	Artus v. Gramercy Towers Condo. Ass'n†	228 Cal. Rptr. 3d 496	26
2019	Sahafzadeh-Taeb v. Taeb (In re Sahafzadeh-Taeb)†	251 Cal. Rptr. 3d 610	25
2016	People v. Sibrian†	3 Cal. App. 5th 127	25
2018	People v. Torres†	232 Cal. Rptr. 3d 614	23

Showing the 15 most-cited of 53 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 is Kathleen M. Banke on?: Kathleen M. Banke is 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

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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).