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 1938 / Served to 1950

Louis H. Ward

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Louis H. Ward was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1938. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1938–1950 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1938	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Ward authored 365 published opinions for the court (1938–1950), plus 22 dissents and 9 concurrences. Most cited: Zakaessian v. Zakaessian (57 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. 115 of these were attributed to Ward 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
1945	Zakaessian v. Zakaessian	70 Cal. App. 2d 721	57
1943	La Societe Francaise De Bienfaisance Mutuelle v. California EmploymentCommission	56 Cal. App. 2d 534	56
1943	Elsbach v. Mulligan	58 Cal. App. 2d 354	54
1944	Greif v. Dullea	66 Cal. App. 2d 986	52
1946	People v. Richardson	74 Cal. App. 2d 528	49
1943	People v. Bucchierre	57 Cal. App. 2d 153	49
1942	People v. Coleman	53 Cal. App. 2d 18	46
1943	People v. Darcy	59 Cal. App. 2d 342	43
1940	Mecchi v. Lyon Van & Storage Co.	38 Cal. App. 2d 674	43
1946	Liberty Mutual Insurance v. Industrial Accident Commission· Concurrence†	73 Cal. App. 2d 555	42
1942	Oakland California Towel Co. v. Sivils	52 Cal. App. 2d 517	42
1949	Weber v. Marine Cooks' & Stewards' Ass'n	93 Cal. App. 2d 327	38
1949	Raphael v. Raphael	91 Cal. App. 2d 931	38
1940	Scott v. Sheedy	39 Cal. App. 2d 96	37
1949	People v. Scherbing· Concurrence†	93 Cal. App. 2d 736	36

Showing the 15 most-cited of 397 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 Louis H. Ward on?: Louis H. Ward was a 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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12 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).