How do judges of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is presidential appointment.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals / Joined 1994 / Active

Vanessa Ruiz

Senior Judge, District of Columbia Court of Appeals

Vanessa Ruiz is a Senior Judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, serving since 1994. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 1994 · 32 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1994	District of Columbia Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Georgetown University

Judicial Record

In our data, Ruiz authored 457 published opinions for the court (1995–2019), plus 38 dissents and 48 concurrences. Most cited: Rivas v. United States (215 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. 420 of these were attributed to Ruiz 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
2001	Rivas v. United States· Concurrence†	783 A.2d 125	215
1996	Johnson v. United States· Concurrence†	683 A.2d 1087	210
2011	Hedgepeth v. Whitman Walker Clinic†	22 A.3d 789	163
2011	Grayson v. AT & T CORP.· Concurrence†	15 A.3d 219	139
1996	Diamond v. Davis· Concurrence†	680 A.2d 364	136
2000	Executive Sandwich Shoppe, Inc. v. Carr Realty Corp.†	749 A.2d 724	108
2007	Evans-Reid v. District of Columbia†	930 A.2d 930	100
2007	Kotsch v. District of Columbia†	924 A.2d 1040	100
1997	Crowley v. North American Telecommunications Ass'n	691 A.2d 1169	99
2003	Futrell v. Department of Labor Federal Credit Union	816 A.2d 793	96
2006	Washkoviak v. Student Loan Marketing Ass'n· Concurrence†	900 A.2d 168	87
2016	COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE AND RAND SIMBERG v. MICHAEL E. MANN, NATIONAL REVIEW, INC. v. MICHAEL E. MANN†	150 A.3d 1213	79
2008	Estenos v. PAHO/WHO Federal Credit Union†	952 A.2d 878	78
1997	Hendel v. World Plan Executive Council· Dissent†	705 A.2d 656	71
2001	Davis v. Moore· Concurrence†	772 A.2d 204	68

Showing the 15 most-cited of 543 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 District of Columbia Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is presidential appointment.
Which court is Vanessa Ruiz on?: Vanessa Ruiz is a Senior Judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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32 years on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).