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 2018 / Active

Michael Jay Raphael

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Michael Jay Raphael is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2018. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1968 · age 58
Tenure: Since 2018 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2012	Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles	–	–
2018	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Rice University		1990
Yale University		1993

Judicial Record

In our data, Raphael authored 2 published opinions for the court (2019), plus 2 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: In re White (21 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. 5 of these were attributed to Raphael 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	In re White· Dissent†	246 Cal. Rptr. 3d 670	21
2019	People v. Kidd†	248 Cal. Rptr. 3d 234	17
2019	Citrus El Dorado, LLC v. Chi. Title Co.†	244 Cal. Rptr. 3d 372	15
2019	People v. Polk· Concurrence†	248 Cal. Rptr. 3d 335	9
2019	People v. Salcido· Dissent†	246 Cal. Rptr. 3d 851	0

Showing the 5 most-cited of 5 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 Michael Jay Raphael on?: Michael Jay Raphael 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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7 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).