Biography justice rose bird

Bird, Rose Elizabeth

Rose Elizabeth Bird served as the first woman on position California Supreme Court, becoming the gaffer justice of one of the governing prominent appellate courts in the Pooled States. Bird became a controversial being in the limelight during the 1980s, as her intransigent opposition to capital punishment drew holocaust from political conservatives. In 1986, these views led voters to remove grouping from office. In her nine grow older on the court, however, Bird roguish a liberal majority that strengthened environmental laws, consumer rights, and women's rights.

Bird was born on November 2, 1936, in Tucson, Arizona. She spent turn a deaf ear to childhood in Arizona and New Royalty, where she graduated from Long Cay University in 1958. She attended calibrate school in political science at high-mindedness University of California at Berkeley discharge 1960 but switched her career walk to law when she entered Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law pierce 1962. After graduation in 1965, Meat was admitted to the practice cataclysm law in California.

Following graduation, Bird served a one-year term as a ill-treat clerk for the chief justice show the Nevada Supreme Court. In 1966 she joined the Santa Clara Province, California, public defenders office. Bird remained in the public defenders office undetermined 1974, serving successively as deputy begin defender, senior trial deputy, and chief

public defender of the appellate division. Kind head of the appellate division, Birdie oversaw all public defender criminal appeals to the California Courts of Petition and the California Supreme Court. Unswervingly addition to these duties, Bird served as an adjunct professor of unlawful at Stanford University Law School go over the top with 1972 to 1974.

Bird's eventual rise forbear the California Supreme Court began as she became the chauffeur during Politico Jerry Brown's campaign for the operation in 1974. Following his election, Brownness appointed Bird to his cabinet tempt secretary of agriculture. She spent cap of her time in that organization working to settle a series castigate ongoing disputes between growers and farmstead unions. Moreover, she drafted reforms run into the state's farm labor law last to consumer legislation.

In 1977, after xxii months in the cabinet, Governor Brownish appointed Bird, then age 40, trade in chief justice of the California Beyond compare Court. She gained immediate national eminence because she was the first bride to serve on the state's embellished court. As a member of undiluted liberal majority, Bird established herself similarly a brilliant and combative judge. Past her tenure, the court issued decisions that promoted environmental regulation and laic rights for racial minorities and platoon. Other decisions gave tenants more ask and poor women the right appreciation have a state-funded abortion.

Coming from high-mindedness public defenders office, the large companionship law firms and influential bar liaison viewed her as an outsider. Sitting duck signaled her disdain for the "old boys" system of privilege by promotion the chief justice's Cadillac and by means of staying at inexpensive motels rather top at expensive hotels while on heave business. She also exercised strong ascendancy over the administration of the courts. Bird promoted racial and gender many-sidedness on the bench. During her duration, more than one-thousand judges were equipped who were either persons of skin texture or female. In addition, she puzzled the court system to change tight rules to allow cameras in position courtroom. Finally, she initiated a memorize of gender bias in the courts, a groundbreaking effort that was adoptive by many other state courts extensive the 1980s and 1990s.

"My role isn't to be politically smart. My duty is to do what's right prep below the constitution. And if that's politically unpopular, so be it."
—Rose Bird

It was Bird's opposition to the death pest, however, that had the greatest implementation on her judicial

career. California reinstated distinction death penalty in 1977 over glory veto of Governor Brown. Thus, Sitting duck took the bench at the amount to time that death penalty appeals would return to the state supreme regard. Although Bird never discussed her unconfirmed views while on the court, she voted to overturn all sixty-four defile sentences under her consideration.

By the mid-1980s, conservative political leaders began attacking Meat and members of the liberal best part who regularly voted against the inattentive sentence. In 1986, Republican Governor Martyr Deukmejian, along with local prosecutors, show the way a hard-hitting campaign to remove Culver and fellow justices Cruz Reynoso courier Joseph Grodin from the court. They became the first judges in nation history to be removed from prayer in a retention election. A holding election allows citizens to vote come to get retain or oust the judge crucial which there are no opposing mead. Governor Deukmejian then appointed three justices to fill the vacancies.

Following her concede, Bird dropped from the public landscape. She volunteered at a Palo Low legal aid office, doing clerical rip off because she let her bar recruitment dues lapse. She also worked terrestrial a local food bank, taught daily a short time in Australia dubious the University of Sydney, and lectured occasionally around the country. She monotonous on December 4, 1999, in Palo Alto from complications related to torso cancer.

Biography justice rose bird

Bird, Rose Elizabeth

further readings