ROSE BIRD IMMERSED IN CONTROVERSY

In 1977, then-gov. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr. appointed Rose Bird to be chief justice of California. She became the first woman on the California Supreme Court, the first female chief justice of that court and in 1986, the only chief justice in California history to be removed from office by voters.

SACRAMENTO — When Gov. Brown nominated Rose Elizabeth Bird to be chief justice of the California Supreme Court, he plunged her into a crucible of heated controversy and historic significance.

But the situation is nothing new for the 40-year-old woman who has carved a reputation for toughness and competence in a crowded career as a lawyer, law professor and state cabinet officer.

If confirmed, she would be the first woman to serve on the California Supreme Court and only the second woman in the nation to lead a state court -following Susie M. Sharp, chief justice of North Carolina.

Bird already has had a number of “firsts” in her career. Her confirmation, however, is far from an accomplished fact since opposition to her is heavy, geared mainly to the fact

that she has never served as a judge.

Both she and Brown are aware of that and determined to weather the storm.

For more than 30 years, the California Supreme Court has been among the nation's most innovative, influential and respected state courts.

Thus innovative thinking was a prerequisite when Brown began hunting for a successor to Chief Justice Donald Wright, who retired Feb. 1. It was more important to him than lengthy judicial experience.

Bird has built a reputation for innovation. After graduating magna cum laude from Long Island University and earning her law degree from Boalt Hall at UC Berkeley in 1965, she became the first woman in the Santa Clara County public defender's office. In 1975, she became one of two women to be named to cabinet-level rank in the Brown administration, the first in California history. Brown appointed her to the demanding post of secretary of Agriculture and Services, an agency of state government that employs 18,000 persons in 11 departments and spends more than $400 million a year.

Thrust soon after into boiling controversy over farm labor legislation, she was at the apex of negotiations that brought angry farm workers and equally angry growers storming to the Capitol with regularity. It was her proposal that formed the framework “of the administration's successful compromise.

Bird, whose blonde upswept hair atop her 5-foot-11-inch height makes her seem to tower over the crowd, is a tough bargainer who has earned her share of critics in her two years in the Brown cabinet. Yet she is at the

same time distinctly feminine, a paradox that is ref lected even in her style of dress. She favors pantsuits, but often tops it off with a ribbon in her hair.

But she often can be blunt, and her penchant for cutting through rhetoric to the heart of an issue has made her one of Brown's most trusted advisers.

Administration insiders say it often is Bird, after discussions have grown wearingly long-winded, who tells her colleagues to “stop talking and come to a decision.”

She has demonstrated, they say, what Brown said he was looking for in a chief justice: “A balance between legal skills and a good working understanding of government.”

Even before joining state government, however, Bird broke new legal ground. While she was serving in the public defender's office in Santa Clara, she prepared a brief that persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to refuse to hear a case that had been appealed by the attorney general of California. Her argument: That the California Supreme Court had made its decision in the case on the basis of the California Constitution and that the U.S. Constitution need not be invoked. The case, People vs. Krivda, which involved a search of a garbage can, developed the concept of independent state grounds.

In accepting the position, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized a limitation on its own jurisdiction, a restriction that has become increasingly significant to civil libertarians who since have tended to take their cases to state-level courts.