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 2001 / Active

Richard M. Aronson

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Richard M. Aronson is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2001. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1950 · age 76
Tenure: Since 2001 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2001	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of San Diego
University of San Diego

Judicial Record

In our data, Aronson authored 170 published opinions for the court (2001–2019), plus 8 concurrences. Most cited: Christian Research Institute v. Alnor (195 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. 90 of these were attributed to Aronson 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
2008	Christian Research Institute v. Alnor	165 Cal. App. 4th 1315	195
2011	Wills v. Superior Court†	195 Cal. App. 4th 143	139
2005	Morris v. Redwood Empire Bancorp	27 Cal. Rptr. 3d 797	119
2002	In Re Antoinette S.	129 Cal. Rptr. 2d 15	116
2016	Carbajal v. CWPSC, Inc.†	245 Cal. App. 4th 227	115
2011	People v. Sifuentes†	195 Cal. App. 4th 1410	114
2006	Kolar v. Donahue, McIntosh & Hammerton	52 Cal. Rptr. 3d 712	109
2018	In re Bennett†	237 Cal. Rptr. 3d 610	107
2013	Acquire II, Ltd. v. Colton Real Estate Group†	213 Cal. App. 4th 959	103
2007	Mokler v. County of Orange	68 Cal. Rptr. 3d 568	95
2003	Metalclad Corp. v. Ventana Environmental Organizational Partnership	1 Cal. Rptr. 3d 328	94
2017	McDermott Will & Emery LLP v. Superior Court of Orange County†	10 Cal. App. 5th 1083	90
2007	Melican v. Regents of the University of California	59 Cal. Rptr. 3d 672	89
2015	People v. Ramirez†	233 Cal. App. 4th 940	80
2005	Electronic Funds Solutions v. Murphy	36 Cal. Rptr. 3d 663	79

Showing the 15 most-cited of 178 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 Richard M. Aronson on?: Richard M. Aronson is 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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24 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).