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 1990 / Served to 2008

Thomas A. Harris

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Thomas A. Harris was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1990. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1990–2008 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1990	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Harris authored 31 published opinions for the court (1991–2008), plus 1 concurrence. Most cited: People v. Soto (107 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. 32 of these were attributed to Harris 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
1998	People v. Soto†	64 Cal. App. 4th 966	107
2001	People v. Lara†	103 Cal. Rptr. 2d 201	99
2007	Westamerica Bank v. Mbg Industries, Inc.†	70 Cal. Rptr. 3d 125	47
1995	Varni Bros. Corp. v. Wine World, Inc.†	35 Cal. App. 4th 880	47
2003	M. W. v. Panama Buena Vista Union School District· Concurrence†	1 Cal. Rptr. 3d 673	44
1995	People v. Sierra†	37 Cal. App. 4th 1690	42
1991	People v. Lee†	234 Cal. App. 3d 1214	33
1999	People v. Koy Leng†	83 Cal. Rptr. 2d 433	29
1995	Green v. State Center Community College District†	34 Cal. App. 4th 1348	26
2000	People v. Luisa Z.†	93 Cal. Rptr. 2d 231	25
1995	Lopez v. Tulare Joint Union High School District†	34 Cal. App. 4th 1302	23
1991	People v. Dollar†	228 Cal. App. 3d 1335	18
1992	People v. Superior Court (Brent)†	2 Cal. App. 4th 675	17
1992	People v. Goss†	7 Cal. App. 4th 702	16
2000	People v. Saephanh†	94 Cal. Rptr. 2d 910	14

Showing the 15 most-cited of 32 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 A. Harris on?: Thomas A. Harris 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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18 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).