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 1965 / Served to 1986

Vincent A. Whelan

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Vincent A. Whelan was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1965. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1904 · age 122
Tenure: 1965–1986 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1965	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of Virginia-Main Campus

Judicial Record

In our data, Whelan authored 206 published opinions for the court (1965–1977), plus 11 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Pease v. Beech Aircraft Corp. (47 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. 50 of these were attributed to Whelan 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
1974	Pease v. Beech Aircraft Corp.	38 Cal. App. 3d 450	47
1968	Fallis v. Department of Motor Vehicles	264 Cal. App. 2d 373	47
1976	People v. Mejia· Dissent†	57 Cal. App. 3d 574	46
1970	People v. Gibbs	12 Cal. App. 3d 526	46
1969	People v. Ramirez	2 Cal. App. 3d 345	45
1976	Gamer v. duPont Glore Forgan, Inc.	65 Cal. App. 3d 280	43
1968	August v. Department of Motor Vehicles	264 Cal. App. 2d 52	37
1976	Placentia Fire Fighters v. City of Placentia	57 Cal. App. 3d 9	33
1973	San Diego Wholesale Credit Men's Ass'n. v. Superior Court	35 Cal. App. 3d 458	32
1976	Detrich v. Sergio M.	65 Cal. App. 3d 254	31
1967	Mixon v. Riverview Hospital	254 Cal. App. 2d 364	27
1974	In Re Bentley	43 Cal. App. 3d 988	26
1968	People v. Cirilli	265 Cal. App. 2d 607	26
1970	California State Council of Carpenters v. Superior Court	11 Cal. App. 3d 144	24
1965	People v. Dozier	236 Cal. App. 2d 94	24

Showing the 15 most-cited of 219 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 Vincent A. Whelan on?: Vincent A. Whelan 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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21 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).