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 1985 / Served to 2016

William F. Rylaarsdam

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

William F. Rylaarsdam was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1985. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1985–2016 · 30 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1985	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1989	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1995	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2011	California Court of Appeal	–	–
2012	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Rylaarsdam authored 255 published opinions for the court (1994–2016), plus 4 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Avalos (135 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. 77 of these were attributed to Rylaarsdam 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
1996	People v. Avalos	47 Cal. App. 4th 1569	135
2008	Sierra Club v. City of Orange	163 Cal. App. 4th 523	128
2002	San Diego Watercrafts, Inc. v. Wells Fargo Bank	125 Cal. Rptr. 2d 499	126
2008	People v. Martinez	70 Cal. Rptr. 3d 680	123
2003	People v. Ferraez	5 Cal. Rptr. 3d 640	112
2002	People v. Cuccia	118 Cal. Rptr. 2d 668	111
2005	Evans v. CENTERSTONE DEVELOPMENT CO.	35 Cal. Rptr. 3d 745	109
2011	Provost v. Regents of University of California†	201 Cal. App. 4th 1289	105
2000	DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Co. v. Superior Court	92 Cal. Rptr. 2d 755	105
2012	Plotnik v. Meihaus†	208 Cal. App. 4th 1590	92
2011	Boschma v. Home Loan Center, Inc.· Concurrence†	198 Cal. App. 4th 230	92
1995	People v. Meza	38 Cal. App. 4th 1741	88
1994	Roth v. Rhodes	25 Cal. App. 4th 530	88
2001	In Re Dani R.	106 Cal. Rptr. 2d 926	83
2006	In Re Marriage of Ackerman	52 Cal. Rptr. 3d 744	82

Showing the 15 most-cited of 266 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 F. Rylaarsdam on?: William F. Rylaarsdam 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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30 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).