Rose Bird

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Rose Bird bigraphy, stories - American judge

Rose Bird : biography

November 2, 1936 – December 4, 1999

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.

Reconfirmation loss

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.Chen, Edwin. "California court fight; Bird runs for her life." The Nation, 18 Jan 1986, p. 43-46.

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.Lindsey, Robert. "Deukmejian and Cranston Win As 3 Judges Are Ousted." New York Times, 6 November 1986, sec. A, p. 30. 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. 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 relatives of the victims of the murderers whose sentences Bird and her fellow justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin had voted to reverse.Joseph R. Grodin, In Pursuit of Justice: Reflections of a State Supreme Court Justice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 178–179. 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.

Twelve years later, Mosk explained why he was able to stay and Bird was not:

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 convictions, and in turn, the Lucas court moved toward a more business-friendly and pro-law enforcement judicial philosophy.Culver, John H. "The transformation of the California Supreme Court: 1977-1997." Albany Law Review 61, no. 5 (Mid-Summer 1998): 1461-1490. The can be found at the California State Library.–>

Death and tributes

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. The California Public Defender’s Association established an award in her honor, as did the California Women Lawyers. New York Law School annually awards one graduating student the Chief Justice Rose E. Bird Award for Motivation in Pursuing Public Interest Law.

Early life and experience

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 City, where Bird and her brothers 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: 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), the first female Chief Justice of California, and the first Chief Justice to be removed from the Supreme Court of California.