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 1975 / Served to 1995

William A. Newsom Jr.

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

William A. Newsom Jr. was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1975. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1975–1995 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1975	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1978	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Newsom authored 226 published opinions for the court (1978–1995), plus 17 dissents and 13 concurrences. Most cited: Price v. Wells Fargo Bank (147 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. 75 of these were attributed to Newsom 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
1989	Price v. Wells Fargo Bank	213 Cal. App. 3d 465	147
1984	People v. Toomey	157 Cal. App. 3d 1	103
1995	In Re Monica C.	31 Cal. App. 4th 296	86
1993	People v. Quiroga	16 Cal. App. 4th 961	83
1993	Samura v. Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc.	17 Cal. App. 4th 1284	79
1995	Williams v. Wraxall	33 Cal. App. 4th 120	70
1988	Sundstrom v. County of Mendocino	202 Cal. App. 3d 296	70
1983	G.H.I.I. v. MTS, Inc.	147 Cal. App. 3d 256	67
1986	Terminal Plaza Corp. v. City & County of San Francisco	177 Cal. App. 3d 892	60
1980	People v. St. Andrew· Concurrence†	101 Cal. App. 3d 450	57
1982	Kolling v. Dow Jones & Co.	137 Cal. App. 3d 709	56
1995	Lineaweaver v. Plant Insulation Co.· Concurrence†	31 Cal. App. 4th 1409	53
1987	Barker v. Hull	191 Cal. App. 3d 221	53
1985	International Ass'n of Fire Fighters v. City of Oakland	174 Cal. App. 3d 687	50
1993	Savage v. Pacific Gas & Electric Co.	21 Cal. App. 4th 434	48

Showing the 15 most-cited of 256 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 A. Newsom Jr. on?: William A. Newsom Jr. 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).