How do judges of the Louisiana Court of Appeal reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Louisiana Court of Appeal / Joined 1998 / Served to 2003

Robert Kostelka

Judge, Louisiana Court of Appeal

Robert Kostelka was a Judge of the Louisiana Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1998. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1933 · age 93
Tenure: 1998–2003 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1998	Louisiana Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College
Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College

Judicial Record

In our data, Kostelka authored 30 published opinions for the court (1999–2003), plus 3 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: State v. Hunter (61 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. 21 of these were attributed to Kostelka 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
2000	State v. Hunter	768 So. 2d 687	61
2002	Harrison v. Horseshoe Entertainment	823 So. 2d 1124	25
1999	Medicus v. Scott	744 So. 2d 192	16
2001	State v. Baker	796 So. 2d 145	15
2000	Campbell v. HOSPITAL SERV. DIST. NO. 1, CALDWELL PARISH	768 So. 2d 803	15
2001	Davis v. Smith	796 So. 2d 765	14
2002	State v. Willis	823 So. 2d 1072	11
2002	Ken Lawler Builders, Inc. v. Delaney	837 So. 2d 1	9
1999	State v. Ervin	747 So. 2d 109	9
2001	State ex rel. K.G.†	778 So. 2d 716	7
2001	ACMG of Louisiana, Inc. v. Jones	796 So. 2d 704	5
2000	Kincade v. Midroc Oil Co.†	769 So. 2d 813	5
1999	American Central Ins. Co. v. Hilman	744 So. 2d 190	5
2001	Alaska Southern Partners v. Baxley†	799 So. 2d 680	4
1999	Baird v. Policy Management Systems, Inc.†	731 So. 2d 461	4

Showing the 15 most-cited of 34 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 Louisiana Court of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Robert Kostelka on?: Robert Kostelka was a Judge of the Louisiana 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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5 years on the Louisiana Court of Appeal. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).