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 1988 / Served to 1993

Nathan D. Mihara

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Nathan D. Mihara was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1988. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1988–1993 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1988	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Mihara authored 139 published opinions for the court (1993–2010). Most cited: Reichardt v. Hoffman (309 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.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1997	Reichardt v. Hoffman	52 Cal. App. 4th 754	309
2006	County of Santa Clara v. Atlantic Richfield Co.	40 Cal. Rptr. 3d 313	158
1995	People v. Senior	33 Cal. App. 4th 531	127
2002	People v. Espinoza	116 Cal. Rptr. 2d 700	107
1998	Shelly J. v. Susan J.	79 Cal. Rptr. 2d 922	86
1993	Silva v. Babak S.	18 Cal. App. 4th 1077	82
1998	Meister v. Regents of University of California	78 Cal. Rptr. 2d 913	72
1997	People v. Dat Tan Nguyen	54 Cal. App. 4th 705	71
2008	In Re Alice M.	74 Cal. Rptr. 3d 863	70
1998	Cabesuela v. Browning-Ferris Industries of California, Inc.	80 Cal. Rptr. 2d 60	62
1998	Brassinga v. City of Mountain View	77 Cal. Rptr. 2d 660	61
1997	Galante Vineyards v. Monterey Peninsula Water Management Dist.	60 Cal. App. 4th 1109	60
1999	In Re Brittany C.	90 Cal. Rptr. 2d 737	58
2008	People v. Wardell	162 Cal. App. 4th 1484	57
2008	People v. Bautista	163 Cal. App. 4th 762	53

Showing the 15 most-cited of 139 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 Nathan D. Mihara on?: Nathan D. Mihara was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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4 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).