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 1951 / Served to 1982

Wakefield Taylor

Presiding Justice, California Court of Appeal

Wakefield Taylor was a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1951. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1951–1982 · 30 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1951	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1963	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1971	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Taylor authored 467 published opinions for the court (1960–1993), plus 1 dissent and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Nelson v. Gaunt (154 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. 49 of these were attributed to Taylor 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
1981	Nelson v. Gaunt	125 Cal. App. 3d 623	154
1969	Kriegler v. Eichler Homes, Inc.	269 Cal. App. 2d 224	149
1968	Barth v. B. F. Goodrich Tire Co.	265 Cal. App. 2d 228	122
1992	In Re Michael B.	8 Cal. App. 4th 1698	101
1977	Levy-Zentner Co. v. SOUTHERN PAC. TRANSPORTATION	74 Cal. App. 3d 762	93
1967	Goldberg v. REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIF.	248 Cal. App. 2d 867	93
1966	Gherna v. Ford Motor Co.	246 Cal. App. 2d 639	80
1992	People v. Armstrong	8 Cal. App. 4th 1060	77
1976	Department of Social Services v. Janice P.	61 Cal. App. 3d 310	74
1981	Raven's Cove Townhomes, Inc. v. Knuppe Development Co.	114 Cal. App. 3d 783	70
1974	People v. Beyea	38 Cal. App. 3d 176	67
1971	Wetherbee v. United Ins. Co. of America	18 Cal. App. 3d 266	66
1969	Kirk v. Regents of University of California	273 Cal. App. 2d 430	61
1972	Arnold v. Browne	27 Cal. App. 3d 386	59
1971	People v. Turner	22 Cal. App. 3d 174	59

Showing the 15 most-cited of 469 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 Wakefield Taylor on?: Wakefield Taylor was a Presiding 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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30 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).