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 1966 / Served to 1982

Stephen K. Tamura

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Stephen K. Tamura was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1966. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1911–1982
Tenure: 1966–1982 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1966	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Tamura authored 216 published opinions for the court (1966–1982), plus 8 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co. (234 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. 28 of these were attributed to Tamura 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
1981	Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co.	119 Cal. App. 3d 757	234
1977	Glendale Federal Savings & Loan Ass'n v. Marina View Heights Development Co.	66 Cal. App. 3d 101	159
1976	Wheeler v. St. Joseph Hospital	63 Cal. App. 3d 345	152
1975	Rodgers v. Kemper Construction Co.	50 Cal. App. 3d 608	142
1971	Coast Bank v. Holmes	19 Cal. App. 3d 581	88
1976	Merlo v. Standard Life & Accident Insurance· Concurrence†	59 Cal. App. 3d 5	85
1973	Crumpler v. Board of Administration	32 Cal. App. 3d 567	84
1977	Brokopp v. Ford Motor Co.· Concurrence†	71 Cal. App. 3d 841	74
1968	People v. Bolinski	260 Cal. App. 2d 705	74
1978	Lemelle v. Superior Court· Dissent†	77 Cal. App. 3d 148	73
1974	CEEED v. California Coastal Zone Conservation Commission	43 Cal. App. 3d 306	69
1971	Gerwin v. Southeastern California Ass'n of Seventh Day Adventists	14 Cal. App. 3d 209	69
1970	People v. Lee	3 Cal. App. 3d 514	65
1980	Allen v. Jones	104 Cal. App. 3d 207	63
1979	Cramer v. Morrison	88 Cal. App. 3d 873	62

Showing the 15 most-cited of 230 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 Stephen K. Tamura on?: Stephen K. Tamura was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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16 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).