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 1969 / Served to 1984

Thomas William Caldecott

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Thomas William Caldecott was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1969. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Alameda. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1914–1994
Tenure: 1969–1984 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1957	Superior Court of California, County of Alameda	–	–
1969	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1974	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of California-Berkeley
University of California-Berkeley

Judicial Record

In our data, Caldecott authored 170 published opinions for the court (1969–1984), plus 2 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Redevelopment Agency v. City of Berkeley (103 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. 21 of these were attributed to Caldecott 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
1978	Redevelopment Agency v. City of Berkeley	80 Cal. App. 3d 158	103
1978	Walters v. Marler	83 Cal. App. 3d 1	88
1976	Miller v. National American Life Insurance	54 Cal. App. 3d 331	71
1981	LaRosa v. Superior Court	122 Cal. App. 3d 741	61
1970	Candlestick Properties, Inc. v. San Francisco Bay Conservation & Development Commission	11 Cal. App. 3d 557	60
1970	People v. Hayko	7 Cal. App. 3d 604	60
1970	Garcia v. Halsett	3 Cal. App. 3d 319	57
1972	Hinson v. Delis	26 Cal. App. 3d 62	52
1981	People v. Ryan	116 Cal. App. 3d 168	50
1976	Patterson v. Central Coast Regional Commission	58 Cal. App. 3d 833	48
1984	Sipple v. Chronicle Publishing Co.	154 Cal. App. 3d 1040	45
1980	People v. Johnson	104 Cal. App. 3d 598	45
1976	People v. Adams	59 Cal. App. 3d 559	43
1980	People v. Blake	105 Cal. App. 3d 619	42
1978	Ritchey v. Villa Nueva Condominium Assn.	81 Cal. App. 3d 688	41

Showing the 15 most-cited of 174 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 Thomas William Caldecott on?: Thomas William Caldecott was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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15 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).