Gov. Jerry Brown has had his second chance to reshape the nation’s most influential state court, the California Supreme Court, according to The New York Times.
In his first term, nearly 40 years ago, Brown appointed the first female chief justice, Rose E. Bird, to the California Supreme Court. Bird had never served as a judge and, along with two other judges Brown named to the court, was recalled by voters in an election in 1986.
This time around Brown has made three more nominations to the court. His choices “were the product of a long search that included consultations with two members of the U.S. Supreme Court,” The New York Times wrote.
“I was looking for people who you could say were ‘learned in the law’ – a phrase you might not hear too much anymore,” said Brown. “I put the word out: Are there people who are scholars or of unusual ability?”
“The three nominees share certain characteristics: They are quite young, they have impeccable qualifications and they are by all accounts brilliant,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine.
Like Bird, none of the three people Brown nominated had ever served a day as a judge. Justices Goodwin Liu and Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar were law professors, and Justice Leondra R. Kruger was an associate attorney general. They are all under 45 and are all graduates of the Yale Law School.
“There is always a tension between appointing people who have already been judges and appointing people who have not previously been judges, but I think that’s an interesting balance for any court to have,” said Margaret H. Marshall, a former chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
Brown’s selections have also brought diversified backgrounds to the court. Liu is the child of Taiwanese parents; Cuéllar was born in Mexico; and Kruger is the first African-American to serve on the court since 2005.
Kruger’s confirmation has restored the court to a female majority.
“Legal scholars said that aside from Brown’s effort to inject more intellectual heft to the court, they expected that these appointments would move the court to the left,” The New York Times wrote.
For Brown, the new appointments were like “an opportunity for a bit of a do-over after the troubled appointment of Ms. Bird,” opined The New York Times.
A 2007 study by the University of California, Davis, Law Review said that the California Supreme Court was the most influential in the nation, having been cited the most by other courts in the preceding 65 years.
With the new appointments, “the court is well poised to really make a mark,” said Gerald F. Uelmen, a professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law. “And, I think that is what Gov. Brown is looking for: leaving a legacy that will restore the luster of the Supreme Court he knew when he clerked for the court.”
In his four terms as governor, Brown has appointed 11 justices to the state Supreme Court.
