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 2006 / Active

Maria Elena Stratton

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Maria Elena Stratton is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2006. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1953 · age 73
Tenure: Since 2006 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2006	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2018	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of Southern California	magna cum laude	1975
University of California-Berkeley		1979

Judicial Record

In our data, Stratton authored 9 published opinions for the court (2019). Most cited: United Grand Corp. v. Malibu Hillbillies, LLC (386 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. 9 of these were attributed to Stratton 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	United Grand Corp. v. Malibu Hillbillies, LLC†	248 Cal. Rptr. 3d 294	386
2019	Hernandez v. First Student, Inc.†	249 Cal. Rptr. 3d 681	236
2019	L. A. Cnty. Dep't of Children & Family Servs. v. S.Y. (In re L.W.)†	244 Cal. Rptr. 3d 352	168
2019	Le Mere v. L. A. Unified Sch. Dist.†	247 Cal. Rptr. 3d 76	51
2019	Herriott v. Herriott†	244 Cal. Rptr. 3d 755	19
2019	Samsky v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co.†	250 Cal. Rptr. 3d 423	11
2019	Venice Coal. to Pres. Unique Cmty. Character v. City of L. A.†	242 Cal. Rptr. 3d 288	11
2019	Hersey v. Vopava†	251 Cal. Rptr. 3d 262	7
2019	Samsky v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co.†	249 Cal. Rptr. 3d 152	0

Showing the 9 most-cited of 9 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 Maria Elena Stratton on?: Maria Elena Stratton is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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20 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).