Opinion: Remembering Justice Boland
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There is a type of judge who exists largely in the imagination – the woman or man who takes the job seriously but with a light touch; who engages in the life of the community; who openly and happily enjoys responsibility without succumbing to the trappings or arrogance of office. Justice Paul Boland, who died this week, was such a judge and such a man.
He was, to say the least, a respected jurist. He treated lawyers well and wrote with dignity and eloquence. He sought genuine justice, not just technical propriety. And he was a gracious master of his courtroom. Welcoming one lawyer to his court a few years back, he noted that the brief identified the young man as an associate, but that, Boland said, was inaccurate. The lawyer had become a partner since filing the brief, and Boland corrected him. This week, that same young lawyer told the story with a knot in his throat.
Boland appeared, one colleague said, to be a tall man, but really he was a giant, full of outsized energy and ebullience. He would spot a friend across a dining room – Pete’s in Downtown was a favorite lunch spot – and would rumble over, introducing his companion, asking about the latest news in politics or books. He would ask a question and then actually listen. Boland listened so devotedly, with such purpose, that he made you realize how infrequently most people do that. With patience and enthusiasm, he connected one person to another, across disciplines and generations. He constructed, in his cheerful, bountiful way, a civic culture of respect and joy.
When I published a book last year, Justice Boland took it – and me – under his big wing. He introduced me to judges and justices, including California Chief Justice Ron George, whom Boland respected very much. Time and again, Boland asked me to sign copies for his clerks, family and friends, and occasionally he dropped by our house – he lived a few blocks away – to plot sales strategy. At an event in San Francisco a few months ago, he took me by the arm after I spoke to a group of his colleagues and led me to my table, plopping me next to one Supreme Court justice and introducing me to another. How, I asked myself, could I possibly have deserved this attention from this great and generous man? The answer, I realized then and now, is within the question itself: Paul Boland was great and generous, and he was, especially, good.
He was my neighbor and, I’m proud to say, my friend. I miss him, as do so many others in this community. He was a father and a husband, a teacher, a mentor, a reader, a listener and a big and happy man. He was a link between the law and those it serves, a judge and justice in the fullness of that profession.