Malcolm Lucas, 19272016:
California chief justice turned the state’s high court rightward.
Malcolm Lucas, who as California’s chief justice led the state Supreme Court’s conservative turnabout after voters removed its liberal majority in 1986, died Wednesday at age 89.
Mr. Lucas, a federal judge and former law partner of Gov. George Deukmejian, was appointed to the state’s high court by Deukmejian in 1984 and became a dissenting voice on a court that had been controlled by liberals for nearly three decades. But two years later, for the first time in the court’s history, the voters denied retention to three of its members — Chief Justice Rose Bird and Justices Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso, all appointees of Gov. Jerry Brown — after a campaign that focused on their reversals of death sentences.
Deukmejian elevated Mr. Lucas to chief justice in January 1987 and named two more new justices, giving the tribunal a Republican-appointed majority that it still retains. The new court started upholding death sentences — eventually reaching an affirmance rate of more than 90 percent, the highest in the nation — and also rolled back some long-standing liberal precedents.
Mr. Lucas, joined by his colleagues, narrowed consumers’ ability to sue insurance companies and other businesses for damages. The court interpreted Proposition 13, the 1978 tax-cut initiative, to require two-thirds voter approval for many local tax increases. Another ruling virtually eliminated legal challenges to decisions by private arbitrators. In criminal law, the new majority removed barriers to evidence from some illegal police searches and illegally obtained confessions.
When Mr. Lucas wrote a ruling in 1991 that upheld an initiative limiting legislators’ terms, his language — referring to new curbs on an “entrenched, dynastic legislative bureaucracy” — so infuriated lawmakers that they canceled the chief justice’s annual address to the Legislature. But the court did not toss out past precedents wholesale, and often acted with restraint. In 1990, Mr. Lucas wrote a majority opinion upholding most of a prosecution-sponsored voter initiative but overturning a provision of a voterapproved initiative that would have barred California courts from relying on the state Constitution to protect individual rights. A 1994 ruling by Mr. Lucas declared that Californians’ right of privacy protected them against intrusions by businesses and other private entities as well as government agencies, while also upholding random drug testing of college athletes.
The Lucas court also won public approval, with justices once again gaining retention by overwhelming voter majorities. The chief justice improved morale on a court that had been racked with internal conflict, and had an appearance that fit the public perception of his office — tall, silver-haired and deep-voiced.
“Someone described him to me as a chief out of central casting,” the current chief justice, Tani Cantil-Sakauye, said late Wednesday. “He came in during a time of turmoil and he brought leadership. He brought peace. He brought the family together again.”
“Chief Justice Lucas led California’s highest court with a steady hand and a probing mind,” Gov. Jerry Brown said in a statement.
Deukmejian, in a statement reported by the Sacramento Bee, said, “Malcolm was a wonderful colleague, a man of great integrity and principle, a wise judge, and a valued personal friend.”
Mr. Lucas retired from the court in 1996 and was succeeded by Ronald George. His departure had the unintended effect of enabling his successors to nullify one of his court’s last rulings, which had not yet become final, and strike down legislative restrictions on MediCal abortions for poor women. He served as an arbitrator and also practiced law after leaving the court.
Malcolm M. Lucas was born in Berkeley in 1927 and grew up in Long Beach. He attended the University of Southern California and its law school, then practiced law in Long Beach from 1954 to 1967, when Gov. Ronald Reagan appointed him to the Los Angeles County Superior Court. President Richard Nixon named him to the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles four years later.
He is survived by his wife, Fiorenza Cartwright Lucas; two children, California State Librarian and former Chronicle reporter Greg Lucas, and Lisa Lucas Mooney; and six stepchildren.