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 1970 / Served to 1990

William R. Channell

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

William R. Channell was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1970. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1970–1990 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1970	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1985	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Channell authored 92 published opinions for the court (1985–1990), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: In Re Katrina C. (92 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. 13 of these were attributed to Channell 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
1988	In Re Katrina C.	201 Cal. App. 3d 540	92
1986	Bowman v. City of Petaluma	185 Cal. App. 3d 1065	63
1990	Luck v. Southern Pacific Transportation Co.	218 Cal. App. 3d 1	61
1988	David Welch Co. v. Erskine & Tulley	203 Cal. App. 3d 884	57
1990	Industrial Indemnity Co. v. City & County of San Francisco	218 Cal. App. 3d 999	35
1990	In Re Jeffrey P.	218 Cal. App. 3d 1548	34
1989	People v. Jack	213 Cal. App. 3d 913	32
1985	People v. Harty	173 Cal. App. 3d 493	32
1988	Smith v. Board of Medical Quality Assurance	202 Cal. App. 3d 316	31
1986	Leach v. Home Savings & Loan Assn.	185 Cal. App. 3d 1295	31
1986	Trailer Train Co. v. State Board of Equalization	180 Cal. App. 3d 565	30
1989	People v. Smith	215 Cal. App. 3d 19	26
1986	Ascherman v. General Reinsurance Corp.	183 Cal. App. 3d 307	26
1986	First N.B.S. Corp. v. Gabrielsen	179 Cal. App. 3d 1189	26
1989	Leydon v. Alexander	212 Cal. App. 3d 1	23

Showing the 15 most-cited of 93 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 William R. Channell on?: William R. Channell was an Associate 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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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).