Former California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso took a not-so-subtle dig at the court’s current occupants Friday during a morning seminar at the American Bar Association’s annual meeting.
|
The ABA in SF
Legal Pad is roaming the floor of the annual meeting of the American Bar Association. Check back over the next few days for fresh reports. Previously:
|
Reynoso, former Chief Justice Rose Bird and ex-Justice Joseph Grodin were removed from the state’s highest court in 1986 by voters upset with their liberal positions on the death penalty. Voters felt they had reversed too many capital convictions.
On Friday, Reynoso, now a professor emeritus at the UC-Davis School of Law, said that, nonetheless, the Supreme Court back in those days and for decades before had always been viewed as one of the best in the land.
“But,” he said, “I haven’t heard those kinds of comments about the court since I left.”
Reynoso, who was taking part in a seminar about public reactions to controversial rulings, insinuated that the current panel — while comprised of “good people” — isn’t taking tough stands on sensitive issues. He said he often wonders whether Chief Justice Ronald George and his six compatriots believe “if they ever do anything controversial, the same thing that happened to me might happen to them.”
Reynoso said former California Supreme Court Justice Otto Kaus often said it’s difficult to ignore the alligator in the bathtub if you want to take a bath.
“So I wonder,” he said, “if subconsciously they can’t help but think about Otto Kaus and the alligator in the bathtub.”
— Mike McKee
Judges are people too. If they want to be popular, should consider another line of work.
Posted by: Bonnie Russell | August 11, 2007 at 08:50 AM
I think that Reynoso's comments that people used to say the the CA Supreme Court was the best in the land and now they don't, says more about who he hangs out with than anything about the court. In fact during his tenure, the court was viewed as one of the most extreme, activists courts in the country.
Take the death penalty, for example. It is fine for Reynoso to be opposed to the death penalty, but it was clearly constituional and approved by the voters. Nonetheless, Reynoso and Bird never voted to uphold a death sentence in the 80 or 90 cases that came before them. It is pretty obvious that they were putting their politics before their judicial duties.
The death penalty cases were just one of many instances where this disregard for their duties was obvious. In other cases they were just flaky and incompetent.
Reynoso and Rose well deserved to be removed from the Court. If liberals are looking for martyrs, they should look elsewhere.
Posted by: SFBurke | August 14, 2007 at 10:50 AM