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 1937 / Served to 1972

Thomas P. White

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Thomas P. White was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1937. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1937–1972 · 35 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1937	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, White authored 925 published opinions for the court (1937–1972), plus 16 dissents and 19 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Zammora (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. 220 of these were attributed to White 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
1944	People v. Zammora	66 Cal. App. 2d 166	107
1951	People v. Hess	104 Cal. App. 2d 642	87
1949	Wheeler v. Gregg	90 Cal. App. 2d 348	84
1939	Metter v. Los Angeles Examiner	35 Cal. App. 2d 304	76
1942	People v. Brophy	49 Cal. App. 2d 15	74
1938	People v. Gilbert	26 Cal. App. 2d 1	71
1946	Anderson v. Thacher	76 Cal. App. 2d 50	68
1938	People v. Yant	26 Cal. App. 2d 725	68
1948	Llewellyn v. Cheesewright	83 Cal. App. 2d 534	62
1940	Marr v. Postal Union Life Insurance Co.	40 Cal. App. 2d 673	58
1949	People v. Geibel	93 Cal. App. 2d 147	57
1951	Kalmus v. Kalmus	230 P.2d 57	56
1939	People v. Curtis	36 Cal. App. 2d 306	52
1957	People v. Dupree	156 Cal. App. 2d 60	51
1949	Girvetz v. Boys' Market, Inc.	91 Cal. App. 2d 827	51

Showing the 15 most-cited of 960 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 P. White on?: Thomas P. White 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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35 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).