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

Luis A. Lavin

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Luis A. Lavin is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2015. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2015 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2001	Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles	–	–
2015	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Cornell University	Labor and Industrial Relations	1981
Harvard University		1985

Judicial Record

In our data, Lavin authored 24 published opinions for the court (2015–2019), plus 1 concurrence. Most cited: People v. Valenti (119 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. 25 of these were attributed to Lavin 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
2016	People v. Valenti†	243 Cal. App. 4th 1140	119
2018	Austin v. Medicis†	230 Cal. Rptr. 3d 528	48
2019	People v. Rodriguez†	246 Cal. Rptr. 3d 392	39
2017	People v. Paz†	10 Cal. App. 5th 1023	35
2018	People v. Vasquez†	241 Cal. Rptr. 3d 882	34
2017	People v. Spaccia†	220 Cal. Rptr. 3d 65	31
2015	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. Stacey J.†	242 Cal. App. 4th 619	31
2017	People v. Francis†	224 Cal. Rptr. 3d 657	30
2015	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. Andrea S.†	235 Cal. App. 4th 115	29
2018	L. A. Cnty. Dep't of Children & Family Servs. v. Pedro M. (In re Bruno M.)†	239 Cal. Rptr. 3d 635	27
2018	Port Med. Wellness, Inc. v. Conn. Gen. Life Ins. Co.†	233 Cal. Rptr. 3d 830	26
2016	People v. Solis†	200 Cal. Rptr. 3d 463	23
2018	L. A. Cnty. Dep't of Children & Family Servs. v. Charles B. (In re G.B.)†	239 Cal. Rptr. 3d 168	19
2018	Gonzalez v. Lew†	228 Cal. Rptr. 3d 775	10
2019	City of Sierra Madre v. SunTrust Mortg., Inc.†	244 Cal. Rptr. 3d 118	9

Showing the 15 most-cited of 25 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 Luis A. Lavin on?: Luis A. Lavin 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).