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 2008

William Stein

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

William Stein was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, who joined the court in 1985. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1985–2008 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1985	California Court of Appeal	–	–
1988	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Stein authored 190 published opinions for the court (1988–2008), plus 2 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Wilbanks v. Wolk (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. 16 of these were attributed to Stein 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
2004	Wilbanks v. Wolk	17 Cal. Rptr. 3d 497	157
2006	McRae v. Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation	48 Cal. Rptr. 3d 313	130
1990	In Re Jennifer G.	221 Cal. App. 3d 752	117
1998	Weeks v. Baker & McKenzie	74 Cal. Rptr. 2d 510	107
2001	Napa Citizens for Honest Government v. Napa County Board of Supervisors	110 Cal. Rptr. 2d 579	99
2005	People v. Akins	27 Cal. Rptr. 3d 815	67
2008	In Re Marriage of Gong & Kwong	163 Cal. App. 4th 510	66
1999	People v. Poe	88 Cal. Rptr. 2d 437	62
1992	Rio Vista Farm Bureau Center v. County of Solano	5 Cal. App. 4th 351	61
2001	Nishihama v. City & County of San Francisco	112 Cal. Rptr. 2d 861	59
1991	Weller v. American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.	232 Cal. App. 3d 991	58
2005	People v. I. M.†	125 Cal. App. 4th 1195	55
2004	Sierra Club v. County of Napa	19 Cal. Rptr. 3d 1	55
2002	Lachapelle v. Toyota Motor Credit Corporation	126 Cal. Rptr. 2d 32	55
1994	Alioto Fish Co., Ltd. v. Alioto	27 Cal. App. 4th 1669	52

Showing the 15 most-cited of 194 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 Stein on?: William Stein 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

23 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).