Rose Elizabeth Bird (November 2, 1936–December 4, 1999) served for 10 years as the 25th Chief Justice of California. She was the first female Justice, and first female Chief Justice, on that court, appointed by then Governor Jerry Brown. In the November 1986 state election she also became the only Chief Justice in California history to be removed from office by the voters.
Contents |
Bird was born near Tucson, Arizona. Her father, after having deserted the family, died when she was five, so her mother Anne moved with Rose and her two older brothers to New York, where they grew up in poverty. Bird earned her bachelor's degree Magna Cum Laude from Long Island University and went on to graduate from the UC Berkeley School of Law (also known as Boalt Hall) in 1965.
Her career was marked by several firsts: prior to becoming the first female Chief Justice of California, she was the first female law clerk in the Supreme Court of Nevada, the first female deputy public defender in Santa Clara County, the first woman to hold a cabinet-level job in California (as Secretary of Agriculture) and the first chief justice (male or female) to be removed from the California Supreme Court. In 1966 Rose Bird had joined the Santa Clara County Public Defender's Office where, between 1966 and 1974, she held the positions of deputy public defender, senior trial deputy, and chief of the appellate division. In addition to arguing cases before California's Supreme Court, Courts of Appeal, and in federal court, Bird taught at Stanford Law School from 1972 through 1974.
Her tenure on the Supreme Court was controversial. She was criticized by conservatives as an ideologue who substituted her personal bias over the law and state Constitution. Her widely perceived personal versus judicial opposition to the death penalty was a particular sore point for her critics. She was first up for confirmation in 1978. There was a campaign waged against her, which she did not respond to. However, on election day, it was charged that the court decided to withhold the publication of a controversial ruling until after the 1978 vote.[1] The ensuing controversy generated considerable press coverage but, by then, Bird had been confirmed by a 52% to 48% margin.
Bird was also controversial among the Associate Justices on her own court. In a 1998 oral history interview, Stanley Mosk explained that Bird was a bright and intelligent judge but a terrible administrator (one of the Chief Justice's major responsibilities); she did bizarre things like forcing all the Associate Justices to make appointments just to talk to her for any reason.[2]
Bird was the first and remains the only Chief Justice to be removed from that office by a majority of the state's voters. California justices are selected by the governor but must be regularly reconfirmed by the electorate; prior to Bird, no California appellate judge had ever failed such a vote.[3]
She was removed in the November 4, 1986 election by a margin of 67 to 33 percent after a high-profile campaign that cited her categorical opposition to the death penalty.[4] She reviewed a total of 64 capital cases appealed to the court. In each instance she issued a decision overturning the death penalty that had been imposed at trial. She was joined in her decision to overturn by at least three other members of the court in 61 of those cases.[5] This led Bird's critics to claim that she was substituting her own opinions and ideas for the laws and precedents upon which judicial decisions are supposed to be made. In addition, the Bird court struck down California's "use a gun, go to jail" law that made a prison term mandatory for any crime in which the use of a gun was involved. The anti-Bird campaign ran television commercials featuring the children of the victims of the murderers whose sentences Bird and her fellow justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin had voted to reverse. In addition to Bird, Reynoso and Grodin were also voted off the seven-justice California state supreme court bench. Justice Stanley Mosk, who often joined Bird, Reynoso, and Grodin, was not challenged nor were the other three justices.
12 years later, Mosk explained why he was able to stay and Bird was not:
| “ | Rose Bird was pilloried because she generally voted to find some defect in death penalty convictions and to reverse them. I probably don't like the death penalty any more than she does. As a matter of fact, I think the death penalty is wrong, that a person has no right to kill, and the state has no right to kill. But the difference is that I took an oath to support the law as it is and not as I might prefer it to be, and therefore, I've written my share of opinions upholding capital judgments.[6] | ” |
As a result of the 1986 election, newly-reelected Governor George Deukmejian was able to elevate Justice Malcolm Lucas to Chief Justice and appoint three new associate justices that more closely matched his generally conservative political and legal convictions.
Bird appeared as a family court judge in an episode of the 1984-85 TV series Pryor's Place starring Richard Pryor. In 1987, Bird appeared as a judge on a television program called Superior Court (a show somewhat similar to The People's Court, though with scripted trials usually focussing on topical issues).
Bird died on December 4, 1999, at Stanford University Medical Center from complications of breast cancer (which she had fought on and off since 1976) at the age of 63.[5] The California Public Defender's Association established an award in her honor, as did the California Women Lawyers.
| Legal offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Donald R. Wright |
Chief Justice of California 1977 –1987 |
Succeeded by Malcolm M. Lucas |