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 2002 / Served to 2018

Maria P. Rivera

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Maria P. Rivera was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 2002. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2002–2018 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2002	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Rivera authored 75 published opinions for the court (2000–2018), plus 1 concurrence. Most cited: Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control v. Alcoholic Beverage Control Appeals Board (105 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. 41 of these were attributed to Rivera 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	Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control v. Alcoholic Beverage Control Appeals Board	123 Cal. Rptr. 2d 278	105
2000	Barella v. Exchange Bank	101 Cal. Rptr. 2d 167	66
2015	In re Marriage of Rifkin & Carty†	234 Cal. App. 4th 1339	49
2011	Oakland Heritage Alliance v. City of Oakland†	195 Cal. App. 4th 884	49
2007	In Re Roderick	65 Cal. Rptr. 3d 16	49
2004	City of Modesto Redevelopment Agency v. Superior Court	13 Cal. Rptr. 3d 865	47
2011	People v. Bui†	192 Cal. App. 4th 1002	46
2012	Haynes v. Emc Mortgage Corp.†	205 Cal. App. 4th 329	42
2009	Turner v. Schultz	175 Cal. App. 4th 974	42
2011	Bonfigli v. Strachan†	192 Cal. App. 4th 1302	30
2004	Lopez v. CHARLES SCHWAB & CO., INC.	13 Cal. Rptr. 3d 544	30
2017	Cummings v. Dessel†	220 Cal. Rptr. 3d 463	29
2017	ZL Techs., Inc. v. Doe†	220 Cal. Rptr. 3d 569	29
2004	Coral Construction, Inc. v. City & County of San Francisco	10 Cal. Rptr. 3d 65	29
2002	Greene v. Dillingham Construction N.A.	124 Cal. Rptr. 2d 250	29

Showing the 15 most-cited of 76 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 Maria P. Rivera on?: Maria P. Rivera was 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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15 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).