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 1959 / Served to 1988

Norman Elkington

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Norman Elkington was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1959. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1959–1988 · 28 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1959	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1966	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Elkington authored 585 published opinions for the court (1967–1988), plus 11 dissents and 9 concurrences. Most cited: Bowers v. Bernards (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. 98 of these were attributed to Elkington 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
1984	Bowers v. Bernards	150 Cal. App. 3d 870	386
1971	Bayside Timber Co. v. Board of Supervisors	20 Cal. App. 3d 1	100
1968	Bush v. Bright	264 Cal. App. 2d 788	84
1970	People v. Beasley	5 Cal. App. 3d 617	79
1985	Troensegaard v. Silvercrest Industries, Inc.	175 Cal. App. 3d 218	76
1976	Stambaugh v. Superior Court	62 Cal. App. 3d 231	63
1970	People v. West Coast Shows, Inc.	10 Cal. App. 3d 462	63
1981	Board of Trustees v. Superior Court	119 Cal. App. 3d 516	58
1979	Warden v. Kahn· Dissent†	99 Cal. App. 3d 805	58
1970	Ferraro v. Pacific Finance Corp.	8 Cal. App. 3d 339	55
1979	Star Motor Imports, Inc. v. Superior Court	88 Cal. App. 3d 201	52
1978	People v. Superior Court (Tunch)	80 Cal. App. 3d 665	52
1980	Safeway Stores, Inc. v. Workers' Compensation Appeals Board· Dissent†	104 Cal. App. 3d 528	51
1977	Henderson v. Security Nat. Bank	72 Cal. App. 3d 764	49
1977	NATIONAL AMERICAN INS. v. Ins. Co. of N. America†	74 Cal. App. 3d 565	48

Showing the 15 most-cited of 605 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 Norman Elkington on?: Norman Elkington 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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28 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).