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 1955 / Served to 1969

Walter J. Fourt

Justice, California Court of Appeal

Walter J. Fourt was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1955. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1955–1969 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1955	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Fourt authored 759 published opinions for the court (1956–1970), plus 9 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: People v. West (91 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. 187 of these were attributed to Fourt 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
1956	People v. West	144 Cal. App. 2d 214	91
1956	People v. Jaurequi	142 Cal. App. 2d 555	68
1969	Swaffield v. Universal Ecsco Corp.	271 Cal. App. 2d 147	64
1959	Ramey v. General Petroleum Corp.	173 Cal. App. 2d 386	56
1956	People v. King	140 Cal. App. 2d 1	56
1959	People v. King	175 Cal. App. 2d 386	55
1956	Trowbridge v. Superior Court	144 Cal. App. 2d 13	47
1956	People v. Redston	139 Cal. App. 2d 485	46
1965	O'Loane v. O'Rourke	231 Cal. App. 2d 774	44
1956	People v. Silva	143 Cal. App. 2d 162	43
1967	Shakin v. Board of Medical Examiners	254 Cal. App. 2d 102	42
1968	Serenko v. Bright	263 Cal. App. 2d 682	41
1960	People v. Mason	184 Cal. App. 2d 317	38
1957	People v. Aragon	154 Cal. App. 2d 646	38
1960	People v. Kerfoot	184 Cal. App. 2d 622	37

Showing the 15 most-cited of 779 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 Walter J. Fourt on?: Walter J. Fourt 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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13 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).