Tracie L. BrownIncumbent

Candidate for Court of Appeal Justice, California Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, Division 4, Seat 1

Tracie L. Brown is the Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, Division Four. She graduated from Harvard University in 1992. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude. She then spent a year working in Japan. She earned her J.D. from the UC Berkeley School of Law in 1996. She clerked for Judge M. Margaret McKeown. McKeown served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Brown then worked as an associate at Morrison and Foerster LLP. She also worked as an associate at Cooley LLP. In 2002 she joined the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California. As an Assistant U.S. Attorney, she tried many civil and criminal cases. She argued before the Ninth Circuit. She won the California State Bar's Jack Berman Award in 2002. That award recognized her pro bono work for San Francisco's Japanese American community. She won the Asian American Bar Association's Joe Morozumi Award in 2003. She served on the San Francisco Superior Court from 2013 to 2018. She presided over a wide range of criminal matters, including the Domestic Violence Court. Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. appointed her an Associate Justice of Division Four in 2018. Voters retained her in November 2022. Governor Gavin Newsom then elevated her to Presiding Justice of Division Four. The Commission on Judicial Appointments confirmed her on April 7, 2023. She faces a nonpartisan yes-or-no retention vote, with no opponent, on the November 3, 2026 ballot.

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