Governor’s state high court pick has no judicial or appellate experience

The most outlandish theory about Gov. Jerry Brown’s long-delayed pick for the state Supreme Court was that he was going to appoint himself. His actual pick, longtime adviser Joshua Groban, is probably the next closest thing.

Groban is best known for helping Brown choose roughly 600 judges and justices. He also served as Brown’s ambassador to minority groups that have been marginalized.

While Groban’s lack of judicial or appellate experience has been criticized in some circles, supporters say his wide range of experiences in the legal world make him an embodiment of diversity within a single person. A former boss in the private sector adds that Groban’s extensive trial experience as a business litigator has been undervalued.

At just 45, 35 years younger than the outgoing governor, he could cement a majority of four recent Democratic appointees that could last until Brown’s 110th birthday.

But to be clear, Brown and Groban are very different people. While the governor is known for his dislike of small talk, Groban is widely viewed as an outgoing consensus builder.

Justice Therese M. Stewart said she once encountered Brown at a gathering. She thanked him for appointing her to the 1st District Court of Appeal and said she was enjoying the work.

“He said, ‘Well that’s not why I appointed you,’” she said with a laugh.

But Brown assured her place in history in 2014 when he made her the first openly lesbian justice on a California appeals court. LGBT groups lobbied for Brown to make history again by naming an openly gay justice to the state high court.

Her 1st District colleague, Division One Presiding Justice Jim M. Humes, the first openly gay man on a state appeals court and a former Brown adviser, was long rumored to be a frontrunner.

Yet when Groban was tabbed, the LGBT Judicial Officers of California put a statement praising the appointment.

“He has been just been relentless in pursuing the goal of diversity on the bench,” Stewart said of Groban, adding, “In this climate where there is open anti-Semitism in the country, I think it’s really fantastic that the governor put someone who is Jewish on the court.”

Ronald L. Olson is a longtime partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP in Los Angeles, where Groban was an associate from 2005 to 2011. He said Groban came in with stellar credentials, including a clerkship with Judge William C. Conner of the Southern District of New York, one of the most prominent venues in the country.

“I do not want to say we had made a decision, but he certainly was a person who would have gotten significant consideration [for a partnership] in a year or two,” Olson said. “He chose public service, which is pretty admirable.”

Groban was a business litigator on a wide variety of cases for the firm, Olson said, including a four-month trial. He also represented an aircraft manufacturer, and worked on cases involving antitrust law, economic regulation and nursing homes.

Olson added that he worked directly with Groban on “three significant matters” that were “vastly different” from each other.

“He’s spent a fair amount of time in private practice,” said Rex S. Heinke, co-head of the Supreme Court and appellate practice at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. “He brings that experience, which there is not a lot of on the court.”

Even some who are not critics of any of Brown’s four recent picks — a group that also includes Goodwin H. Liu, Mariano-Florentino Cuellar and Leondra R. Kruger — note that all share one gap in their resumes.

“I’m not sure that it’s the greatest idea to the have the majority of the justices of the California Supreme Court never having had any state appellate appearances,” said Jon B. Eisenberg, a Healdsburg attorney who has made numerous appearances before the high court.

But Eisenberg added that taken individually, all four are strong picks, even if they don’t know what’s it’s like to be “behind the lectern” in that high pressure environment. He added that Brown is hardly to blame for how appeals court picks have changed around the country in recent decades.

“It used to be known quantities of a certain age,” Eisenberg said. “Now the safest thing you can do is appoint someone with no paper record who is really young.”

Arthur Gilbert, presiding justice of Division Six of the 2nd District Court of Appeal, has worked extensively with Groban on appellate court picks. He said as part of this work Groban has read reams of appellate briefs and decisions in recent years. He’s also been a guest lecturer in Groban’s appellate practices class at UCLA School of Law.

“I’m very pleased that he’s on the court,” Gilbert said. “He seems to really have insight into the appellate practice.”