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 1991 / Active

Vance Wallace Raye

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

Vance Wallace Raye is a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), serving since 1991. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Sacramento. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1946 · age 80
Tenure: Since 1991 · 35 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1989	Superior Court of California, County of Sacramento	–	–
1991	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2010	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2010	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of Oklahoma-Norman Campus		1967
University of Oklahoma-Norman Campus		1970

Judicial Record

In our data, Raye authored 180 published opinions for the court (1991–2019), plus 7 dissents and 10 concurrences. Most cited: King v. United Parcel Service, Inc. (202 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. 81 of these were attributed to Raye 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
2007	King v. United Parcel Service, Inc.	60 Cal. Rptr. 3d 359	202
2014	People v. Bradford†	227 Cal. App. 4th 1322	185
1995	In Re Elizabeth R.	35 Cal. App. 4th 1774	155
1995	People v. Hennessey	37 Cal. App. 4th 1830	145
2019	Sacramento Cnty. Dep't of Child v. J.C. (In re A.W.)†	251 Cal. Rptr. 3d 50	134
2004	JRS Products, Inc. v. Matsushita Electric Corp. of America	8 Cal. Rptr. 3d 840	121
1994	In Re Joshua C.	24 Cal. App. 4th 1544	89
1996	Oakdale Village Group v. Fong	43 Cal. App. 4th 539	83
2011	People v. Patel†	196 Cal. App. 4th 956	80
1996	Bond v. Pulsar Video Productions	50 Cal. App. 4th 918	78
1997	Campos v. Anderson	57 Cal. App. 4th 784	75
2012	People v. Lynch†	209 Cal. App. 4th 353	74
2017	People v. Perez†	226 Cal. Rptr. 3d 820	72
2000	Planning and Conservation League v. Department of Water Resources	100 Cal. Rptr. 2d 173	71
2014	People v. Noyan†	232 Cal. App. 4th 657	70

Showing the 15 most-cited of 197 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 is Vance Wallace Raye on?: Vance Wallace Raye is a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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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).