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 1977 / Served to 1997

Robert L. Martin

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Robert L. Martin was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1929–2010
Tenure: 1977–1997 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1982	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Martin authored 130 published opinions for the court (1979–1996). Most cited: Munoz v. State of California (118 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. 11 of these were attributed to Martin 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
1995	Munoz v. State of California	33 Cal. App. 4th 1767	118
1996	Westside Center Associates v. Safeway Stores 23, Inc.	42 Cal. App. 4th 507	101
1996	People v. Ramos	50 Cal. App. 4th 810	85
1994	In Re Richard K.	25 Cal. App. 4th 580	80
1986	Cicone v. URS Corp.	183 Cal. App. 3d 194	80
1993	Hayter Trucking, Inc. v. Shell Western E & P, Inc.	18 Cal. App. 4th 1	79
1993	Nichols v. Keller	15 Cal. App. 4th 1672	69
1990	Brandon & Tibbs v. George Kevorkian Accountancy Corp.	226 Cal. App. 3d 442	57
1994	Larson v. State Personnel Board	28 Cal. App. 4th 265	54
1988	People v. Jeff	204 Cal. App. 3d 309	54
1983	People v. Marquez	143 Cal. App. 3d 797	54
1994	Childs v. PAINE WEBBER INCORPORATED	29 Cal. App. 4th 982	52
1989	Brooks v. Eugene Burger Management Corp.	215 Cal. App. 3d 1611	52
1988	Nunes Turfgrass, Inc. v. Vaughan-Jacklin Seed Co.	200 Cal. App. 3d 1518	51
1996	People v. Dunn-Gonzalez	47 Cal. App. 4th 899	44

Showing the 15 most-cited of 130 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 L. Martin on?: Robert L. Martin 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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20 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).