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 1971 / Served to 1973

William P. Clark Jr.

Justice, California Court of Appeal

William P. Clark Jr. was a Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1971. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1971–1973 · 1 yr

Judicial service

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

Judicial Record

In our data, Clark authored 6 published opinions for the court (1972). Most cited: County of Los Angeles v. American Savings & Loan Ass'n (16 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. 1 of these was attributed to Clark 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
1972	County of Los Angeles v. American Savings & Loan Ass'n	26 Cal. App. 3d 7	16
1972	People v. Todd	26 Cal. App. 3d 15	13
1972	Clermont v. Secured Investment Corp.	25 Cal. App. 3d 766	11
1972	Allen v. Flournoy	26 Cal. App. 3d 774	4
1972	People v. Williamson	26 Cal. App. 3d 740	0
1972	Union Pacific Railroad v. City of Long Beach†	24 Cal. App. 3d 594	0

Showing the 6 most-cited of 6 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 P. Clark Jr. on?: William P. Clark Jr. 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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1 year 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).