Chief Justice says she sometimes takes one for the team

SACRAMENTO - A lot has changed in the nine years she has been California's Chief Justice, Tani Cantil-Sakauye told government students at her alma mater, C.K. McClatchy High School on Tuesday. For instance, what people call her.

"The judiciary and the legal profession when I started was very male dominated," said Cantil-Sakauye, who became chief justice in 2010. "People wouldn't even call me chief. They'd call me lady. They would say things like, how long have you been on the bench? I'd say 20 years. They had a hard time accepting my authority."

But the class largely asked nuts-and-bolts questions about things like choosing cases, writing opinions, judicial elections and managing a court's bureaucracy of "easily over 100,000 employees." She characterized the state high court as "seven different law firms," each with its own staff, that tries to look at each case independently.

Part of her role as chief, she added, is sometimes taking one for the team: for instance, when the court has to write on a boring or unpleasant case, or one that could lead to public criticism.

"When I think cases are potentially stinkers, I sometimes assign them to myself because I feel like I'm out there more than my colleagues," she said. "I'm in the Capitol, and if there is going to be heat on a stinker, I should take it because I'm the chief."

She said this is something she learned while watching other judges work during her time on lower courts. For instance, when a judge is coming up for reelection, other judges or a presiding judge might volunteer to take a controversial case off their hands. Retiring judges, she added, will often take these cases in their final months on the job.

Another major job, she said, is finding the 100 or so cases the court will hear and write opinions on each year out of "hundreds of thousands" of petitions. One justice will write a memo on a particular case, but all of the justices will look at a case independently of each other.

"We all attack that memo with vigor," Cantil-Sakauye said. "We write whether we agree. We write how we disagree with the analysis. We disagree on word choice. We disagree on case law."

McClatchy High School itself has been an incubator for some of the most famous names in California's legal community. Besides former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, California's first Latino Attorney General, Xavier Becerra, attended McClatchy at the same time as Cantil-Sakauye. Another alum who recently spoke at the school is U.S. Eastern District Judge Morrison C. England Jr., who is black.

Cantil-Sakauye said the school was instrumental in her success, starting a series of incremental steps that took her from being the "quiet fourth child in a big Filipino family" to her current position. Part of this was getting interested in debate while she was at McClatchy and continuing on through college debate. She said part of the inspiration for going to law school was finding out people she had beaten soundly in debate tournaments had gotten into prestigious law programs.

She has also not been shy about speaking out where she feels she sees injustice. Since 2017, she has criticized immigration arrests at courthouses in the state, saying they cause people to stay away from the courts. A lifelong Republican, she cited these arrests along with the contentious confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanagh when she announced last year she had left the party. "My job is not to be popular, it's not to be liked," she said.

Standing in front of a stained glass window showing the school's mascot, a lion, she continued to call out practices she sees as unjust. For instance, in California someone must be an attorney for 10 years before coming a judge, and then attend extensive judicial college classes.

Some other states, she said, allow non-lawyers to serve as judges -- often powerful local businessmen.

"That is a system that is ripe for corruption," she said.