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 2017 / Active

William Steven Dato

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

William Steven Dato is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2017. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of San Diego. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1955 · age 71
Tenure: Since 2017 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2003	Superior Court of California, County of San Diego	–	–
2017	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

San Diego State University	Political Science, Economics	1977
University of California-Los Angeles		1980

Judicial Record

In our data, Dato authored 49 published opinions for the court (2017–2019), plus 2 dissents. Most cited: People v. Baker (157 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. 51 of these were attributed to Dato 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
2018	People v. Baker†	229 Cal. Rptr. 3d 431	157
2018	People v. Franklin†	230 Cal. Rptr. 3d 647	60
2017	Valerie G. v. Louis G.†	11 Cal. App. 5th 773	57
2019	Mackey v. Bd. of Trs. of the Cal. State Univ.†	242 Cal. Rptr. 3d 757	53
2018	People v. Brady†	232 Cal. Rptr. 3d 220	45
2018	Airs Aromatics, LLC v. CBL Data Recovery Techs., Inc.†	233 Cal. Rptr. 3d 656	39
2019	People v. Carter· Dissent†	246 Cal. Rptr. 3d 498	38
2018	People v. Stutelberg†	240 Cal. Rptr. 3d 156	34
2019	People v. Alvarez†	244 Cal. Rptr. 3d 230	33
2017	R.W.L. Enters. v. Oldcastle, Inc.†	226 Cal. Rptr. 3d 677	32
2019	People v. Burns†	251 Cal. Rptr. 3d 442	27
2018	Garcia v. Border Transp. Grp., LLC†	239 Cal. Rptr. 3d 360	23
2018	N.S. v. D.M.†	231 Cal. Rptr. 3d 67	23
2018	City of San Diego v. Superior Court of San Diego Cnty.†	241 Cal. Rptr. 3d 604	22
2018	Lane v. Bell†	228 Cal. Rptr. 3d 605	22

Showing the 15 most-cited of 51 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 William Steven Dato on?: William Steven Dato 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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9 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).