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 1985 / Served to 2009

Rodney Davis

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Rodney Davis was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1985. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1949 · age 77
Tenure: 1985–2009 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1985	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1989	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Davis authored 244 published opinions for the court (1979–2009), plus 1 dissent and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Kuhn v. Department of General Services (223 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. 36 of these were attributed to Davis 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
1994	Kuhn v. Department of General Services	22 Cal. App. 4th 1627	223
1993	San Joaquin County Department of Human Services v. Gary L.	21 Cal. App. 4th 1057	218
2004	People v. High	15 Cal. Rptr. 3d 148	194
1994	Dills v. Redwoods Associates, Ltd.	28 Cal. App. 4th 888	128
2000	In Re Levi U.	92 Cal. Rptr. 2d 648	122
2005	Patten v. Grant Joint Union High School District	37 Cal. Rptr. 3d 113	117
2000	People v. Baniqued	101 Cal. Rptr. 2d 835	87
1999	People v. Buffington	88 Cal. Rptr. 2d 696	87
2007	People v. Andra	67 Cal. Rptr. 3d 439	85
1993	Cal-State Business Products & Services, Inc. v. Ricoh	12 Cal. App. 4th 1666	85
2006	People v. Burton	49 Cal. Rptr. 3d 334	80
2002	Communities for a Better Environment v. California Resources Agency	126 Cal. Rptr. 2d 441	71
1995	People v. Maurer	32 Cal. App. 4th 1121	71
1996	People v. Wright	52 Cal. App. 4th 203	68
1992	Evan F. v. Hughson United Methodist Church	8 Cal. App. 4th 828	68

Showing the 15 most-cited of 252 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 Rodney Davis on?: Rodney Davis 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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23 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).