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 1988 / Active

Richard D. Huffman Sr.

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

Richard D. Huffman Sr. is a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), serving since 1988. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of San Diego. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1939 · age 87
Tenure: Since 1988 · 37 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1985	Superior Court of California, County of San Diego	–	–
1988	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2003	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2003	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

California State University-Long Beach	with distinction	1961
University of Southern California		1965

Judicial Record

In our data, Huffman authored 474 published opinions for the court (1987–2019), plus 5 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Kopp (611 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. 159 of these were attributed to Huffman 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
2019	People v. Kopp†	250 Cal. Rptr. 3d 852	611
2005	San Diego County Health & Human Services Agency v. Christina N.†	132 Cal. App. 4th 212	526
2011	San Diego County Health & Human Services Agency v. Kevin M.†	197 Cal. App. 4th 159	339
1998	Trujillo v. North County Transit Dist.	63 Cal. App. 4th 280	229
2009	In Re Cole C.	174 Cal. App. 4th 900	202
1994	Jones v. Superior Court	26 Cal. App. 4th 92	169
2012	San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency v. R.V.†	208 Cal. App. 4th 837	161
2008	In Re Estate of Young	72 Cal. Rptr. 3d 520	139
2002	Carver v. Chevron U.S.A., Inc.	118 Cal. Rptr. 2d 569	127
2010	County of San Diego v. Gorham	186 Cal. App. 4th 1215	121
2006	In Re Francisco W.	43 Cal. Rptr. 3d 171	118
1992	In Re Christina L.	3 Cal. App. 4th 404	102
2015	San Diego County Health & Human Services Agency v. Anthony B.†	239 Cal. App. 4th 389	93
2002	Shapiro v. San Diego City Council	117 Cal. Rptr. 2d 631	89
2006	People v. Quintero	37 Cal. Rptr. 3d 884	87

Showing the 15 most-cited of 487 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 D. Huffman Sr. on?: Richard D. Huffman Sr. 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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37 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).