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 1985 / Served to 2005

Timothy S. Buckley

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Timothy S. Buckley was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1985. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1945 · age 81
Tenure: 1985–2005 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1985	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1990	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Buckley authored 88 published opinions for the court (1991–2005), plus 2 dissents. Most cited: Kashian v. Harriman (260 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. 12 of these were attributed to Buckley 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
2002	Kashian v. Harriman	120 Cal. Rptr. 2d 576	260
1998	Ochoa v. Pacific Gas & Electric Co.	61 Cal. App. 4th 1480	140
2004	Bakersfield Citizens for Local Control v. City of Bakersfield	22 Cal. Rptr. 3d 203	121
2000	In Re Brison C.	97 Cal. Rptr. 2d 746	103
2003	Mills v. Forestex Co.	134 Cal. Rptr. 2d 273	92
2003	ASS'N OF IRRITATED RESIDENTS v. County of Madera	133 Cal. Rptr. 2d 718	87
1994	San Joaquin Raptor/Wildlife Rescue Center v. County of Stanislaus	27 Cal. App. 4th 713	84
1991	Saldana v. Globe-Weis Systems Co.	233 Cal. App. 3d 1505	76
1992	People v. Saffle	4 Cal. App. 4th 434	74
1991	Rodriguez v. Solis	1 Cal. App. 4th 495	66
1992	People v. McMahan	3 Cal. App. 4th 740	59
2002	In Re the Marriage of Murray	124 Cal. Rptr. 2d 342	57
1992	Horsemen's Benevolent & Protective Ass'n v. Valley Racing Ass'n	4 Cal. App. 4th 1538	56
2001	People v. Murphy	105 Cal. Rptr. 2d 779	47
1994	People v. Tapia· Dissent†	25 Cal. App. 4th 984	41

Showing the 15 most-cited of 90 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 Timothy S. Buckley on?: Timothy S. Buckley 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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20 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).