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 1948 / Served to 1960

Stanley W. Mussell

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Stanley W. Mussell was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1948. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1890–1970
Tenure: 1948–1960 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1948	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Mussell authored 590 published opinions for the court (1948–1959). Most cited: Corp. of Presiding Bishop of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v. City of Porterville (45 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. 116 of these were attributed to Mussell 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
1949	Corp. of Presiding Bishop of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v. City of Porterville	90 Cal. App. 2d 656	45
1950	People v. James	99 Cal. App. 2d 476	37
1952	People v. Thomas	108 Cal. App. 2d 832	36
1950	Holman v. State of California	217 P.2d 448	36
1951	Mefford v. City of Tulare	102 Cal. App. 2d 919	30
1958	Williams v. Standard Accident Insurance	158 Cal. App. 2d 506	29
1951	Estate of Bright v. Western Air Lines, Inc.	104 Cal. App. 2d 827	29
1949	Kauffman v. Kauffman	93 Cal. App. 2d 808	28
1957	People v. Walker	150 Cal. App. 2d 594	27
1956	Sawyer v. City of San Diego	138 Cal. App. 2d 652	26
1955	Warburton v. Kieferle	135 Cal. App. 2d 278	25
1952	Kelly v. Bank of America National Trust & Saving Ass'n	246 P.2d 92	24
1951	People v. Abair	102 Cal. App. 2d 765	24
1949	Briggs v. National Industries, Inc.	92 Cal. App. 2d 542	23
1956	City of Los Angeles v. Frew	139 Cal. App. 2d 859	22

Showing the 15 most-cited of 590 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 Stanley W. Mussell on?: Stanley W. Mussell was a 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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11 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).