Justice George’s legacy

State Chief Justice Ronald M. George, who on Wednesday announced his retirement, is best known to many Californians as the author of the 2008 opinion recognizing same-sex marriage, and that’s no surprise. It was a groundbreaking ruling that continues to reverberate today, even after — especially after — a majority of voters partially overturned it six months later by passing Proposition 8. Some may remember him as the courageous trial judge who in 1981 rejected the decision by the Los Angeles County district attorney to drop charges against accused Hillside Strangler Angelo Buono. George reassigned the prosecution to the state attorney general, which won a conviction and protected the public from what turned out to be two serial killers. Both decisions will deservedly be a part of George’s legacy.

But he also should be recognized for his leading role in hammering a jumble of courts with widely diverging rules, standards, oversight and funding into a single, strong judicial branch that dispenses justice fairly and equally from Calexico to Alturas, Crescent City to San Diego. Some judges, lawyers and litigants may lament the elimination of local municipal courts, especially in districts — such as Los Angeles — whose courts earned high marks for efficiency and innovation. But they cannot honestly regret the demise of the many smaller courts throughout the state that operated more like private clubs or inept bureaucracies with widely varying rules and procedures. Nor can they object to the courts’ liberation, under George’s guidance, from the funding woes and whims of various county boards of supervisors.

He sought to make courthouses safe and accessible. In visiting every court in the state — a monumental task by itself — he saw the conditions under which judges, court staff, jurors and litigants had to go about their daily business. Many buildings were cramped, dilapidated, outmoded or even unsafe. George helped craft a program to fund the replacement of aging and dangerous court buildings, and to ensure that they are located where people live and work now, not where they lived 50 or even 100 years ago, when current facilities were constructed.

George should be recognized as well as a defender of a judiciary worthy of and entitled to independence. He made judges choose between continuing to serve “on assignment” in court and serving wealthy clients as so-called private judges. In so doing, he angered many of his former trial and appellate bench colleagues, but the rule protected the courts’ integrity by keeping judges out of the public-private revolving door. He formed task forces that studied and warned against the corrosive effect that judicial campaign fundraising has in other states. He labored tirelessly behind the scenes for adequate funding.

George also worked to keep courts accessible and accountable to the public. He authored a 1999 opinion upholding the public’s constitutional right of access to civil trials. In that post-O.J. Simpson case, involving a contractual dispute between Clint Eastwood and his former companion, a trial judge had blocked media outlets (including The Times) from the proceedings. In explaining the reversal of the lower court’s decision, George wrote that “in either the civil or criminal courtroom, secrecy insulates the participants, masking impropriety, obscuring incompetence and concealing corruption.”

Some critics argue that for George, accountability had its limits. He presides over a judicial council that some judges around the state brand insular and elitist, and an administrative office that has done too little to open its books to scrutiny. He pushed too hard, some court leaders in Los Angeles and elsewhere charge, to protect court construction funds during a budget crisis, forcing layoffs and courtroom closures. He is too quick, others say, to label those who disagree with him as foot-draggers who long pointlessly for the old days of local prerogative. He places too much faith, some assert, in court administrators’ ability to see through completion of a large and costly computer system.

Consolidation of the courts into a judicial branch remains a work in progress, and the balance between centralization and local control — just like the balance between independence and accountability — always will be subject to recalibration. George wasn’t perfect in leading the court through the crucial 14-year period that ends with his tenure, but it’s hard to imagine someone who could have done better.

In announcing his retirement when he did — his last day will be Jan. 2 — George did the court yet another service: He left to the termed-out Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger the decision on a successor, and thus kept the court’s leadership from becoming a campaign issue for gubernatorial candidates or a political opportunity for the new governor.

Schwarzenegger would be wise to pick someone with George’s centrist approach on the bench and, if possible, the ability to achieve greater consensus among the state’s 58 Superior Courts and greater public access to budget records and administrative decision-making. A new chief justice is unlikely to eliminate tensions, rivalries and disputes, but Schwarzenegger has an opportunity to continue moving the courts toward both independence in legal reasoning and rulings, and accountability for administrative decisions, public service and expenditure of taxpayer dollars.