Santa Monica voters will decide whether to retain California Court of Appeal Justice John Shepard Wiley Jr. on the Nov. 3 general election ballot.

Wiley serves as associate justice on the Second Appellate District, Division Eight, which covers Los Angeles County. The nonpartisan retention question is certified for the ballot, according to BallotReady election data. In a retention race, voters mark "yes" or "no" on whether to keep the justice in office.

Candidate information

  • Name: John Shepard Wiley Jr.
  • Office: Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division Eight
  • Party: Nonpartisan
  • Election: Nov. 3, 2026, California General Election
  • Education: A.B., University of California, Davis; M.A. in economics, University of California, Berkeley; J.D., University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law
  • Personal: Born in Iowa. His family moved to California when he was 12. He attended public school from junior high through law school, according to the California Courts biography.

Experience and public service

Governor Jerry Brown appointed Wiley to the Court of Appeal on Nov. 27, 2018, succeeding Justice Laurence Rubin. The California Commission on Judicial Appointments confirmed the appointment on Dec. 21, 2018, according to the California Courts biography.

Before joining the appellate bench, Wiley served as a judge on the Los Angeles County Superior Court from 2002 to 2018, according to the American Law Institute.

Wiley's legal career spans academia, private practice and public service. He was a tenured professor at UCLA School of Law from 1983 to 2005, where he won UCLA's Distinguished Teaching Award, according to the California Courts biography. He also taught at Harvard Law School, according to BallotReady.

His earlier career included a clerkship for Judge Frank M. Coffin on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, according to the American Law Institute, and a clerkship for Lewis F. Powell Jr., according to BallotReady. He served as an assistant and special assistant U.S. attorney, as counsel to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, as an examiner for the California Commission on Judicial Performance and as of counsel at Mayer, Brown & Platt, according to the American Law Institute.

The Santa Monica Wave recently published a profile of Justice Joshua Groban, who also faces a 2026 retention vote.

This profile is based on publicly available candidate information. No candidate questionnaire responses, policy positions or endorsements were available for this race at the time of publication.