State’s chief judge rebukes Trump ‘damage’
President Trump’s attacks on federal judges who rule against him are damaging the rule of law, California’s chief justice said Tuesday.
In her annual meeting with reporters in San Francisco, Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye was asked about Trump’s judicial disparagements — describing the Republican jurist who ruled against his travel ban as a “so-called judge,” denouncing the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as “hostile” and “in chaos” for rulings on immigration and other issues, and labeling a U.S.born Hispanic judge as a “Mexican” who was biased against him.
“The people uttering those are doing damage, short-term and longterm, to courts, to the rule of law,” said Cantil-Sakauye, an appointee of Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
She also said she was “not surprised to see Chief Justice ( John) Roberts speak out — finally,” against Trump’s judicial attacks. After Trump belittled U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar of San Francisco as an “Obama judge” for a Nov. 19 ruling blocking his restrictions on political asylum, Roberts said, “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” but simply “an extraordinary group of dedicated judges.”
“We as a branch (of government) need to defend our own,” CantilSakauye said. The best way to do that, she said, is to promote civics education and “invite the public into our courtrooms.”
She also criticized local “efforts to take down judges based on who appointed them,” referring to the unsuccessful election campaign in June by four attorneys in the San Francisco public defender’s office against four Superior Court judges, all appointed by Republican governors.
The state Supreme Court, which CantilSakauye leads, has had only six members since Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar retired on Aug. 31, 2017. After fending off the chief justice’s repeated pleas to fill the vacancy and ease the court’s workload, Gov. Jerry Brown nominated his senior legal adviser, Joshua Groban, on Nov. 14. A state commission headed by Cantil-Sakauye is scheduled to vote Dec.21 on his confirmation, which would give the court a majority of Democratic appointees — all by Brown — for the first time since 1986.
Cantil-Sakauye noted that Groban has spent eight years advising the governor on judicial nominations and said he would add “some experience that came from the executive branch and some wisdom from Gov. Brown.”
Overall, the chief justice said, Brown’s more than 600 judicial appointments since 2011 have been “fantastic.” More than half have been women, about 40 percent are non-white, and most come from “a whole new generation” in attitude as well as age, she said.
In contrast to the “tough-on-crime” stance emphasized by previous governors, Cantil-Sakauye said, Brown’s appointees seem more concerned about such issues as climate change and gun violence. These days, she said, that seems to fit the “philosophy of California,” which she described as “people-centric” and “underdog-centric.”
The court system Cantil-Sakauye heads has not fully recovered from the recession of a decade ago that forced counties to cut judicial staffs and close some courtrooms. After trying with mixed success to persuade Brown to increase the courts’ budget, the chief justice said she has met several times with incoming Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Noting that Newsom’s father, William, is a retired state appeals court justice, she said, “We hope that we will have home-field support” in budget negotiations.