Biography of a Consummate Administrator
More than thirty-five years have passed since the voters removed Justice Rose Bird from office. The growth in the number of women, the growing diversity of the state, and the recognition and institution of programs to promote equal representation prompt us to wonder how Justice Rose Bird would have been treated today. Perhaps she would not have had such a sudden and ignominious end to her legal career. The story of the recently retired Chief Justice Cantil Sakauye (2022) suggests just such a possibility.
Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye is a Filipino-American who grew up in Sacramento, attended community college there and completed her law degree at UC Davis. Her legal career began with the Sacramento District Attorney's office, but within a few years, she joined Republican governor George Deukmejian's administration as a legal affairs secretary. Soon, Governor Deukmejian appointed her to be a trial court judge. Then she received successively more important appointments by subsequent Republican governors to become first a superior court judge, then an appeal court judge, and in 2010, Governor Schwarzenegger appointed her to become the new chief justice. Voters retained her in the fall 2010 elections ("Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye").
The most pressing problem that she faced in 2011 was the budget. At this time, the California legislature was stuck every year in a political gridlock with a mismatch between revenues and expenditures. Tax revenues dramatically varied every year because they were based primarily on income, sales, and capital gains taxes. Justice Cantil-Sakauye, as the head of the Judicial Council, had to lobby the legislature to protect funding. The budget situation eased considerably after Governor Brown's election because taxes were raised, and the economy improved as the Great Recession eased.
The resolution of the budget crisis helped free the Chief Justice to pursue systematic improvements in the administration of justice in California. As head of the Judicial Council, her role was not just that of a justice; she was also the manager of a large bureaucracy whose mission is to provide for an effective and just system of administering civil and criminal law. She promoted several initiatives: greater access for the people of California, greater openness or transparency, and innovative programs to improve the administration of justice. Several programs have helped improve access; with the revolution of internet services, legal self-help for people to address many everyday issues is available on court websites. Interpreter services have been expanded to include not just criminal cases but also civil ones. Also, in the Internet era, the Chief Justice led initiatives to open more proceedings, such as those of the Judicial Council and the Court itself, to public viewing on the Internet.
Several programs have brought more innovation to the administration of justice. The Chief Justice developed many more collaborative courts that combine addressing a civil or criminal case with help from social service agencies to address issues of drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, homelessness, and veterans' issues (The Chief Justice's Timeline). More recently, the Court ruled that in criminal trials, when someone is eligible for pretrial release, their ability to pay bail must be considered before setting the amount. In re Humphrey, in March 2021, the Court ruled that Courts must consider the ability to pay in setting bail. They may impose bail if no other conditions of release could be used to help ensure that the defendant appears at their trial. Additionally, local governments temporarily adopted a no-bail standard during the pandemic, engaging in their efforts to reduce or abolish bail as part of criminal justice reform.
Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye almost entirely avoided partisan politics. Other than beginning with the Deukmejian administration, her career has been within the judiciary. She did make headlines in 2018 when after watching the US Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Justice Kavanaugh, she changed her voter registration party membership from Republican to "no party preference" (Wang). At a Public Policy Institute of California talk, the Justice declared herself a "Deukmejian Republican."
Despite these nominal signs of partisanship, most of her public pronouncements were about providing better access, equity, and justice for the people of California. She spoke about the courts as "social justice centers" for Californians. This was certainly not the language of a law-and-order Republican of the 1980s. Instead, her public stance was that of a public administrator seeking to provide better services to the California people.
So, what can we make of the difference between Chief Justice Bird's and Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye's experiences? Just forty years ago, women in law were trailblazers. They broke into a relatively insular network of primarily wealthy white men and their heirs. The lawyers and the judges of the 2020s reflect the diversity of the state and a political and legal culture that has made it much easier for women to succeed. Moreover, the two women's approaches were very different. Bird emphasized doing the right thing even when it was unpopular, such that decisions on the Court were often divided. Cantil-Sakauye prides herself on the consensual practices of memoranda sharing before oral arguments and the frequency of unanimous decisions ("A Conversation…").
The consequences of different times and approaches led to the dramatic 1986 recall of Chief Justice Rose Bird in contrast to the quiet tenure of Justice Cantil-Sakauye from 2010 to 2022.
