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 1990 / Active

Manuel Angelo Ramirez

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

Manuel Angelo Ramirez is a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), serving since 1990. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Orange. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1948 · age 78
Tenure: Since 1990 · 35 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1986	Superior Court of California, County of Orange	–	–
1990	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Whittier College		1970
Loyola Marymount University		1974

Judicial Record

In our data, Ramirez authored 214 published opinions for the court (1991–2019), plus 4 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: Del Real v. City of Riverside (232 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. 117 of these were attributed to Ramirez 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
2002	Del Real v. City of Riverside	115 Cal. Rptr. 2d 705	232
2012	Riverside County Department of Public Social Services v. A.B.†	203 Cal. App. 4th 597	194
2009	Nelson v. Avondale Homeowners Assn.	172 Cal. App. 4th 857	189
2008	People v. Gemelli	74 Cal. Rptr. 3d 901	170
2009	People v. Ochoa· Dissent†	179 Cal. App. 4th 650	159
2016	People v. Perkins†	244 Cal. App. 4th 129	131
2014	People v. Brimmer†	230 Cal. App. 4th 782	131
2009	In re E.W. v. V.P.†	170 Cal. App. 4th 396	107
2010	Riverside County Department of Public Social Services v. G. G.†	188 Cal. App. 4th 687	82
2015	People v. Cardenas†	239 Cal. App. 4th 220	76
2009	People v. Jones	178 Cal. App. 4th 853	73
2011	Dakota Payphone, LLC v. Alcaraz†	192 Cal. App. 4th 493	70
2006	Drum v. Superior Court	43 Cal. Rptr. 3d 279	70
2000	People v. Waples†	79 Cal. App. 4th 1389	66
2015	People v. Shamblin†	236 Cal. App. 4th 1	65

Showing the 15 most-cited of 223 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 Manuel Angelo Ramirez on?: Manuel Angelo Ramirez is a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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35 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).