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 1965 / Served to 1990

Richard W. Abbe

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Richard W. Abbe was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1965. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1965–1990 · 25 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1965	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1982	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Abbe authored 79 published opinions for the court (1978–2000), plus 3 dissents. Most cited: Asia Investment Co. v. Borowski (56 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. 13 of these were attributed to Abbe 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
1982	Asia Investment Co. v. Borowski	133 Cal. App. 3d 832	56
1988	People v. Gibson†	204 Cal. App. 3d 1425	45
1988	People v. Rodriguez	206 Cal. App. 3d 517	40
1990	In Re the Marriage of Fingert	221 Cal. App. 3d 1575	39
1986	Boulas v. Superior Court· Dissent†	188 Cal. App. 3d 422	35
1989	Raytheon Co. v. Fair Employment & Housing Commission	212 Cal. App. 3d 1242	32
1985	Mira Monte Homeowners Assn. v. County of Ventura	165 Cal. App. 3d 357	27
1984	In Re John B.	159 Cal. App. 3d 268	27
1985	Garcia v. Sterling	176 Cal. App. 3d 17	25
2000	People v. Massey	93 Cal. Rptr. 2d 890	23
1988	Alcocer v. Superior Court· Dissent†	206 Cal. App. 3d 951	22
1987	Gonzales v. Superior Court	189 Cal. App. 3d 1542	21
1982	People v. Gilchrist	133 Cal. App. 3d 38	21
1985	Citizens to Preserve the Ojai v. County of Ventura	176 Cal. App. 3d 421	20
1985	People v. Ross	165 Cal. App. 3d 368	20

Showing the 15 most-cited of 82 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 Richard W. Abbe on?: Richard W. Abbe 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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25 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).