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 2015 / Active

Lamar W. Baker

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Lamar W. Baker is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2015. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2015 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2015	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Yale University
Stanford University

Judicial Record

In our data, Baker authored 19 published opinions for the court (2015–2019), plus 4 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Martinez (323 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. 30 of these were attributed to Baker 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
2019	People v. Martinez†	242 Cal. Rptr. 3d 860	323
2017	In re Tyrone A. Miller On Habeas Corpus†	222 Cal. Rptr. 3d 691	143
2018	In re Edwards†	237 Cal. Rptr. 3d 673	45
2015	People v. J.L.†	242 Cal. App. 4th 1108	44
2017	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. A.T.†	8 Cal. App. 5th 101	39
2016	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. A.R.· Concurrence†	247 Cal. App. 4th 1292	39
2017	L. A. Cnty. Dep't of Children & Family Servs. v. C.P. (In re J.P.)· Concurrence†	223 Cal. Rptr. 3d 426	35
2017	Rhule v. WaveFront Technology, Inc.†	8 Cal. App. 5th 1223	33
2016	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. I.S.†	243 Cal. App. 4th 799	22
2019	Potter v. Alliance United Ins. Co.†	250 Cal. Rptr. 3d 282	18
2017	Urban Wildlands Group, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles· Concurrence†	10 Cal. App. 5th 993	18
2018	Newland v. Cnty. of L. A.· Dissent†	234 Cal. Rptr. 3d 374	15
2018	Chacker v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.†	237 Cal. Rptr. 3d 921	14
2018	Quanta Computer Inc. v. Japan Commc'ns Inc.· Dissent†	230 Cal. Rptr. 3d 334	13
2017	Walker v. Appellate Div. of the Superior Court of L. A. Cnty.· Concurrence†	222 Cal. Rptr. 3d 524	10

Showing the 15 most-cited of 30 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 Lamar W. Baker on?: Lamar W. Baker 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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11 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).