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 1961 / Served to 1978

Preston Devine

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Preston Devine was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1961. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1961–1978 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1961	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Devine authored 332 published opinions for the court (1954–1978), plus 2 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Environmental Defense Fund, Inc. v. Coastside County Water District (52 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. 45 of these were attributed to Devine 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
1972	Environmental Defense Fund, Inc. v. Coastside County Water District	27 Cal. App. 3d 695	52
1977	Lostritto v. Southern Pacific Transportation Co.	73 Cal. App. 3d 737	44
1970	People Ex Rel. State of Cal. v. Drinkhouse	4 Cal. App. 3d 931	44
1967	Callahan v. City and County of San Francisco	249 Cal. App. 2d 696	41
1963	Rosefield v. Rosefield	221 Cal. App. 2d 431	41
1973	Russi v. Superior Court· Dissent†	33 Cal. App. 3d 160	37
1966	People v. Quilon	245 Cal. App. 2d 624	36
1972	People v. Richardson	23 Cal. App. 3d 403	33
1963	Fichera v. State Personnel Board	217 Cal. App. 2d 613	33
1964	Pratt v. Adams	229 Cal. App. 2d 602	32
1960	Tsarnas v. Bailey	179 Cal. App. 2d 332	32
1973	People v. Kay	36 Cal. App. 3d 759	31
1965	People v. Currier	232 Cal. App. 2d 103	31
1962	McClain v. County of Alameda	209 Cal. App. 2d 73	31
1971	Lazzareschi Investment Co. v. San Francisco Federal Savings & Loan Ass'n	22 Cal. App. 3d 303	30

Showing the 15 most-cited of 335 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 Preston Devine on?: Preston Devine 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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17 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).