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 1963 / Served to 1987

Robert Kingsley

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Robert Kingsley was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1963. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1963–1987 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1963	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Kingsley authored 820 published opinions for the court (1963–1987), plus 11 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Niles (148 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 Kingsley 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
1964	People v. Niles	227 Cal. App. 2d 749	148
1976	Roberts v. Ball, Hunt, Hart, Brown & Baerwitz· Concurrence†	57 Cal. App. 3d 104	120
1976	Cabell v. Lynette G.	54 Cal. App. 3d 1087	104
1985	People v. Allen	165 Cal. App. 3d 616	93
1984	People v. Levitt	156 Cal. App. 3d 500	76
1973	Noble v. Sears, Roebuck & Co.	33 Cal. App. 3d 654	72
1974	T.E.D. Bearing Co. v. Walter E. Heller & Co.	38 Cal. App. 3d 59	61
1978	People v. Reeder· Concurrence†	82 Cal. App. 3d 543	55
1977	Fielder v. City of Glendale	71 Cal. App. 3d 719	54
1983	People v. Varona	143 Cal. App. 3d 566	53
1970	People v. Chavira	3 Cal. App. 3d 988	52
1965	People v. Hensel	233 Cal. App. 2d 834	52
1987	Sundance v. Municipal Court	192 Cal. App. 3d 268	50
1984	People v. Goldberg	161 Cal. App. 3d 170	47
1969	Golden v. Golden	270 Cal. App. 2d 401	47

Showing the 15 most-cited of 842 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 Robert Kingsley on?: Robert Kingsley 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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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).