Stanley Mosk

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Stanley Mosk (September 12, 1912–June 19, 2001) was an associate justice of the California Supreme Court for 37 years (1964-2001), and holds the record for the longest-serving justice on that court.

[edit] Early life and career

Mosk was born in San Antonio, Texas and grew up in Rockford, Illinois. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1933. He was awarded a J.D. from Southwestern University School of Law in 1935.

After law school, Mosk practiced law and was executive secretary to the Governor of California; he was appointed a Superior Court judge in 1942. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II.

He was elected Attorney General of California in 1958, in a campaign in which his Jewish heritage and religious faith was made an issue. He was re-elected in 1962.

As attorney general for nearly 6 years, he issued approximately 2,000 written opinions, appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Arizona v. California water case, and other landmark cases.

Mosk established the Attorney General's Civil Rights Division and fought to force the Professional Golfers Association to amend its bylaws denying access to minority golfers.

[edit] As a Supreme Court justice

Mosk was appointed to the Court in 1964 by Governor Edmund G. "Pat" Brown.

Although he was a self-described liberal, he often displayed an independent streak that sometimes infuriated his admirers. For example, in Bakke v. Regents of the University of California, 18 Cal. 3d 34 (1976) [1], Mosk ruled that the minority admissions program at the University of California, Davis violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. This decision was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978), which held that race could be factored in admissions to promote ethnic diversity but rejected racial quotas outright.

One of Mosk's contributions to jurisprudence was development of the constitutional doctrine of "independent state grounds". This is the concept that individual rights are not dependent solely on interpretation of the U.S. Constitution by the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts, but also can be found in state constitutions, which often provide greater protection for individuals.