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 1971 / Served to 1983

Rodney K. Potter

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Rodney K. Potter was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1971. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1971–1983 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1971	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1974	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Potter authored 144 published opinions for the court (1974–1983), plus 2 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Medina (112 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. 13 of these were attributed to Potter 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
1974	People v. Medina	41 Cal. App. 3d 438	112
1977	People v. Sandoval	70 Cal. App. 3d 73	61
1979	City Products Corp. v. Globe Indemnity Co.	88 Cal. App. 3d 31	59
1977	Helena Rubenstein Internat. v. Younger	71 Cal. App. 3d 406	59
1975	Quattrone v. Superior Court	44 Cal. App. 3d 296	59
1982	Bank of Idaho v. Pine Avenue Associates	137 Cal. App. 3d 5	55
1976	People v. Bestline Products, Inc.	61 Cal. App. 3d 879	55
1977	People v. Burden	72 Cal. App. 3d 603	54
1981	People v. Bracamonte	119 Cal. App. 3d 644	51
1975	Nordahl v. Department of Real Estate	48 Cal. App. 3d 657	51
1982	Royster v. Montanez	134 Cal. App. 3d 362	49
1980	Tauber-Arons Auctioneers Co. v. Superior Court	101 Cal. App. 3d 268	48
1977	Department of Adoptions v. Daniel G.	68 Cal. App. 3d 146	48
1979	People v. Montano	96 Cal. App. 3d 221	46
1976	Zhadan v. Downtown L.A. Motors	66 Cal. App. 3d 481	43

Showing the 15 most-cited of 148 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 K. Potter on?: Rodney K. Potter 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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12 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).