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 1905 / Active

Ralph C. Harrison

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

Ralph C. Harrison is a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 1905. He previously served on the Supreme Court of California. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1833 · age 193
Tenure: Since 1905 · 121 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1891	Supreme Court of California	–	–
1905	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Harrison authored 776 published opinions for the court (1891–1907), plus 22 dissents and 34 concurrences. Most cited: Glock v. Howard & Wilson Colony Co. (234 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. 538 of these were attributed to Harrison 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
1898	Glock v. Howard & Wilson Colony Co.· Concurrence†	123 Cal. 1	234
1891	Brison v. Brison†	90 Cal. 323	151
1894	Eachus v. Los Angeles Consolidated Electric Railway Co.†	103 Cal. 614	139
1892	Smith v. Whittier†	95 Cal. 279	125
1901	People v. Castro· Concurrence	65 P. 13	123
1892	Kauffman v. Maier†	94 Cal. 269	122
1891	Crim v. Kessing†	89 Cal. 478	106
1891	Sappenfield v. Main Street & Agricultural Park Railroad†	91 Cal. 48	98
1891	Spring Valley Water Works v. Drinkhouse· Concurrence†	92 Cal. 528	95
1892	Ball v. Rawles†	93 Cal. 222	93
1901	In Re the Estate of Fair· Dissent	60 P. 442	92
1896	In re the Estate of Burdick· Concurrence†	112 Cal. 387	86
1894	Livermore v. Waite†	102 Cal. 113	85
1892	Archer v. Salinas City†	93 Cal. 43	83
1898	Goad v. Montgomery†	119 Cal. 552	82

Showing the 15 most-cited of 837 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 is Ralph C. Harrison on?: Ralph C. Harrison is a Presiding 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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121 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).