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 2002 / Active

Sandra Lynn Margulies

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Sandra Lynn Margulies is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2002. She previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Alameda. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1952 · age 74
Tenure: Since 2002 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1988	Superior Court of California, County of Alameda	–	–
2002	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of California-Los Angeles	magna cum laude	1974
Southwestern Law School		1977

Judicial Record

In our data, Margulies authored 131 published opinions for the court (2002–2019), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Alameda County Social Services Agency v. J.W. (420 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. 80 of these were attributed to Margulies 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
2011	Alameda County Social Services Agency v. J.W.†	201 Cal. App. 4th 1484	420
2011	Fontenot v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.†	198 Cal. App. 4th 256	273
2012	Nelsen v. Legacy Partners Residential, Inc.†	207 Cal. App. 4th 1115	84
2010	People v. D.G.†	187 Cal. App. 4th 47	60
2008	RN Solution, Inc. v. Catholic Healthcare West	165 Cal. App. 4th 1511	59
2008	Chavez v. Netflix, Inc.	75 Cal. Rptr. 3d 413	56
2008	Clark v. Optical Coating Laboratory, Inc.	165 Cal. App. 4th 150	54
2019	South of Mkt. Cmty. Action Network v. City and County of San Francisco†	245 Cal. Rptr. 3d 174	53
2009	National Union Fire Insurance Co. of Pittsburgh v. Cambridge Integrated Services Group, Inc.	171 Cal. App. 4th 35	52
2009	People v. M.S.†	174 Cal. App. 4th 1241	51
2018	Ramos v. Superior Court of San Francisco Cnty.†	239 Cal. Rptr. 3d 679	50
2010	People v. Polk†	190 Cal. App. 4th 1183	46
2008	Mercury Insurance v. Pearson	169 Cal. App. 4th 1064	45
2012	City of Pleasanton v. Board of Administration of Public Employees' Retirement System†	211 Cal. App. 4th 522	41
2011	Fort Bragg Unified School District v. Colonial American Casualty & Surety Co.†	194 Cal. App. 4th 891	41

Showing the 15 most-cited of 132 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 is Sandra Lynn Margulies on?: Sandra Lynn Margulies is 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).