Josh Groban confirmed as state Supreme Court justice

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Commission on Judicial Appointments confirmed state Supreme Court nominee Joshua P. Groban and six appellate court justices by unanimous votes on Friday.

The hearings were largely ceremonial, although Groban's lack of judicial experience was raised by one of the justices who voted for him.

Groban already had undergone weeks of vetting by the Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation before he stood for final votes in front of Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, Attorney General Xavier Becerra and J. Anthony Kline, the senior presiding justice of the appellate courts.

Arthur Gilbert, presiding justice of Division Six of the 2nd District Court of Appeal, replaced Kline when the commission considered nominees to that appellate court.

Groban has been a top adviser to Gov. Jerry Brown since joining his campaign in 2010. He had been the governor's Judicial Affairs Secretary since 2011. In that time, Brown has appointed some 600 judges, a third of the California judiciary, and transformed the gender and ethnic makeup of the bench.

Groban will sit on the court when it next meets Jan. 8.

The new justice thanked his wife, Deborah Schoeneman, a writer who has worked on television shows including "Girls." He described how they married just months after he went to work for Brown. Because of long hours and constant work demands, he said he left her with much of the responsibility of raising their two children, 6 and 3.

"Many of us have pursued careers that required incredible sacrifices from our partners," Groban said.

"It sounds like the job you're taking is a lot easier than the one you've had," Becerra said, getting a laugh from the audience.

At multiple times during the hearing, longtime veterans of the California appellate court shared inside jokes and references. For instance, after Gilbert testified in favor of Groban, Kline went on a lengthy discourse about Groban's lack of prior experience on the bench.

"The majority of the members of the California Supreme Court will be people who have never sat on a court," Kline said. "There are people in the legal community who don't think this is healthy."

Kline added, "Why am I going through all this?"

"Because you're Tony Kline," Gilbert said.

"Could be," Kline replied.

Kline said it isn't just Brown's three most recent appointments -- Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Leondra R. Kruger and Goodwin H. Liu, all of whom were present -- but of the majority of Brown's 11 high court nominees over four terms since 1975.

He went on to describe an earlier conversation in which Groban himself said the next justice should be someone with judicial experience.

But despite his remarks, which Kline said were aimed more at Brown than at Groban, the justice voted yes.

Other witnesses speaking in favor of Groban argued that his other experience more than made up for not having been a judge.

Ronald L. Olson, a Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP partner in Los Angeles who helped oversee Groban's work as an associate from 2005 to 2010, said he took on a variety of complex litigation, including arguing before appellate courts.

Therese M. Stewart, an associate justice on Division Two of the 1st District Court of Appeal, said the syllabus from Groban's appellate practice class at UCLA School of Law made her "want to go back to law school."

Stewart, who mentioned that she is the first open lesbian to serve on a California appellate court, praised Groban's outreach to minority bar associations, including the often difficult tasks of seeking minority candidates from rural areas.

She also quoted statistics showing that between 2010 and 2017, the numbers of Latinos, African-Americans and Asian-Americans on the California courts all grew between 24 percent and 30 percent.

"It was Josh who really rolled up his sleeves and made it a reality," Stewart said.

In contrast to Groban, many of the new appellate justices do have long tenures on the bench. None more so than Laurence D. Rubin, who was confirmed as presiding justice of Division Five of the 2nd District Court of Appeal. He has been a justice on the 2nd District, in Division Eight, since 2001.

Rubin noted that it was also Brown who appointed him to the Santa Monica Municipal Court in 1982.

"I'm not sure he's thought about me much in the intervening period," Rubin joked.

The confirmation of Ioana Petrou to the 1st District Court of Appeal, Division Three, was more somber. Petrou dropped out of UC Berkeley School for Law for a time to take care of her mother, who was suffering from leukemia and eventually died.

Petrou testified that the experience of being an immigrant child from Italy who arrived in the working class neighborhood of Queens, New York, taught her empathy for litigants.

"You have to appreciate how difficult it is to come into court," Petrou said. "This is a beautiful room, but also a daunting place to be."

The other justices confirmed were Gordon B. Burns to the 1st District Court of Appeal, Division Five; Tracie L. Brown, 1st District Court of Appeal, Division Four; Brian S. Currey, 2nd District Court of Appeal, Division Four; and John Shepard Wiley Jr., 2nd District Court of Appeal, Division Eight.