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 1957 / Served to 1977

Murray Draper

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Murray Draper was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1957. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1957–1977 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1957	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Stanford University

1930

Judicial Record

In our data, Draper authored 586 published opinions for the court (1955–1977), plus 6 dissents and 15 concurrences. Most cited: Gottsdanker v. Cutter Laboratories (76 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. 135 of these were attributed to Draper 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
1960	Gottsdanker v. Cutter Laboratories	182 Cal. App. 2d 602	76
1960	Walker v. Pacific Indemnity Co.	183 Cal. App. 2d 513	64
1958	Hundley v. St. Francis Hospital	327 P.2d 131	60
1968	Giorgi v. Pacific Gas & Electric Co.	266 Cal. App. 2d 355	58
1957	People v. Dewson· Concurrence†	150 Cal. App. 2d 119	56
1975	Tarantino v. Superior Court	48 Cal. App. 3d 465	52
1960	Watkins v. Real Estate Commissioner	182 Cal. App. 2d 397	46
1973	Jansen v. Children's Hospital Medical Center	31 Cal. App. 3d 22	45
1969	People v. Zyduck	270 Cal. App. 2d 334	44
1969	Wozniak v. Peninsula Hospital· Concurrence†	1 Cal. App. 3d 716	43
1974	Aguilar v. Bocci	39 Cal. App. 3d 475	39
1967	Lopez v. State Farm Fire & Casualty Co.	250 Cal. App. 2d 210	39
1959	Dudum v. City of San Mateo	334 P.2d 968	39
1960	Grand Lake Drive In, Inc. v. Superior Court	179 Cal. App. 2d 122	38
1971	People v. Groce· Dissent†	18 Cal. App. 3d 292	36

Showing the 15 most-cited of 607 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 Murray Draper on?: Murray Draper was a 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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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).