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 2005 / Active

Victoria Marie Chavez

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Victoria Marie Chavez is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2005. She previously served on the Municipal Court of California, County of Los Angeles. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2005 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1988	Municipal Court of California, County of Los Angeles	–	–
2005	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of San Francisco		1975
Loyola Marymount University		1978

Judicial Record

In our data, Chavez authored 53 published opinions for the court (2006–2019), plus 3 dissents. Most cited: Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. Luis V. (176 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. 36 of these were attributed to Chavez 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
2015	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. Luis V.†	236 Cal. App. 4th 297	176
2019	People v. Camacho†	244 Cal. Rptr. 3d 398	127
2015	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. Jessica G.· Dissent†	242 Cal. App. 4th 634	95
2017	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. Niema B.†	9 Cal. App. 5th 469	93
2011	Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. Alma C.†	202 Cal. App. 4th 968	87
2007	People v. Cooper	56 Cal. Rptr. 3d 6	75
2013	Castellon v. U.S. Bancorp†	220 Cal. App. 4th 994	57
2007	Carpenter v. JACK IN THE BOX CORP.	59 Cal. Rptr. 3d 839	55
2009	City of Claremont v. Kruse	177 Cal. App. 4th 1153	53
2007	Pugliese v. Superior Court	53 Cal. Rptr. 3d 681	53
2013	McAllister v. Los Angeles Unified School District†	216 Cal. App. 4th 1198	49
2013	Hernandez v. Amcord, Inc.†	215 Cal. App. 4th 659	49
2008	Stone Street Capital, LLC v. California State Lottery Commission	165 Cal. App. 4th 109	45
2006	People v. Rasmuson	52 Cal. Rptr. 3d 598	42
2017	Citizens of Humanity v. Applied Underwriters, Inc.†	226 Cal. Rptr. 3d 1	41

Showing the 15 most-cited of 56 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 Victoria Marie Chavez on?: Victoria Marie Chavez is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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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).