Allison Marston Danner was appointed as an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, Sixth District, by Governor Brown and unanimously confirmed by the Commission on Judicial Appointments in July 2018. Prior to her elevation to the Court of Appeal, she served as a judge on the Santa Clara County Superior Court for six years.
Justice Danner worked as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of California from July 2007 to June 2012, prosecuting a wide variety of criminal cases.
From 2001-2007, Justice Danner taught as a law professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, where she taught courses in criminal law, public international law, and international criminal law. In that role, she published articles in the Stanford Law Review, the California Law Review, and the Virginia Law Review, among other publications. Justice Danner has served as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and U.C.L.A. Law School and has taught as an adjunct professor at Stanford Law School.
Justice Danner graduated magna cum laude with honors in history from Williams College. She received her J.D. from Stanford Law School, where she also served as an editor on theStanford Law Review and the Stanford Journal of International Law.
Following her graduation from Stanford Law School, Justice Danner worked as a law clerk for Judge John T. Noonan, Jr., on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and then as a law clerk for Justice John Paul Stevens on the United States Supreme Court.
Raised in Palo Alto, California, Justice Danner is married and has two children.