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 1987 / Served to 2021

Patricia D. Benke

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Patricia D. Benke was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1987. She previously served on the Municipal Court of California, County of San Diego and Superior Court of California, County of San Diego. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1987–2021 · 34 yrs
Education: South Florida Bible College and Theological Seminary 1971

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	Municipal Court of California, County of San Diego	–	–
1985	Superior Court of California, County of San Diego	–	–
1987	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

South Florida Bible College and Theological Seminary	A.B.	1971
University of San Diego		1974

Judicial Record

In our data, Benke authored 384 published opinions for the court (1986–2019), plus 18 dissents and 15 concurrences. Most cited: LiMandri v. Judkins (302 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. 158 of these were attributed to Benke 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
1997	LiMandri v. Judkins	52 Cal. App. 4th 326	302
1988	People v. Bowker· Concurrence†	203 Cal. App. 3d 385	271
1997	Hersant v. Department of Social Services	57 Cal. App. 4th 997	212
2008	San Diego County Heath & Human Services Agency v. Michael B.†	164 Cal. App. 4th 289	178
2002	Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance v. Superior Court	119 Cal. Rptr. 2d 190	138
2008	County of San Diego v. State of California	164 Cal. App. 4th 580	129
1999	People v. Balestra	90 Cal. Rptr. 2d 77	99
1990	Maryland Casualty Co. v. Reeder	221 Cal. App. 3d 961	96
2007	People v. Oropeza	59 Cal. Rptr. 3d 653	89
2010	In Re Anna S.	180 Cal. App. 4th 1489	87
2000	Dimock v. Emerald Properties LLC	97 Cal. Rptr. 2d 255	81
2018	People v. Chavez· Concurrence†	231 Cal. Rptr. 3d 20	80
2011	Jones v. Jacobson†	195 Cal. App. 4th 1	79
2007	People v. Montoya	57 Cal. Rptr. 3d 770	78
2000	People v. Lochtefeld	91 Cal. Rptr. 2d 778	77

Showing the 15 most-cited of 417 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 Patricia D. Benke on?: Patricia D. Benke was 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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34 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).