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 2017 / Active

Kathleen A. Meehan

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Kathleen A. Meehan is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2017. She previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Fresno. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2017 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2014	Superior Court of California, County of Fresno	–	–
2017	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of California-Davis
Saint Mary's College	magna cum laude

Judicial Record

In our data, Meehan authored 5 published opinions for the court (2018–2019). Most cited: People v. Kelly (35 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. 5 of these were attributed to Meehan 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
2018	People v. Kelly†	240 Cal. Rptr. 3d 21	35
2018	John Doe v. Good Samaritan Hosp.†	233 Cal. Rptr. 3d 199	27
2019	People v. Craine†	247 Cal. Rptr. 3d 564	21
2018	People v. Hudson†	239 Cal. Rptr. 3d 42	16
2018	People v. N. River Ins. Co.†	244 Cal. Rptr. 3d 432	10

Showing the 5 most-cited of 5 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 A. Meehan on?: Kathleen A. Meehan is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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9 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).