Foes Miss Deadline, Bird’s Stance Backed by State Bar

More than 500 lawyers poured into a Mission Valley convention hall here Monday morning, ready to do one of the things they do best: argue.

Their topic was one of the hottest issues of the year: the 1986 California Supreme Court confirmation election.

The much-awaited debate never took place.

It would have focused on several resolutions endorsing the campaign positions of Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and three justices facing organized conservative opposition--that anyone who votes against a judge based on that judge’s rulings threatens the principles of an independent judiciary.

Deadline Not Met

Automatic endorsement by the State Bar of California delegates for that view was recorded when backers of Bird and the other three embattled justices took advantage of a failure by her opponents to meet a deadline and thus managed to sidestep convention debate on the issue.

None of the resolutions called for outright endorsement of the justices because state law precludes the bar from backing candidates.

Bird’s campaign workers supported each of the measures but focused on a mom-and-apple-pie resolution that had virtually no opposition and supported the concept that judges should not be opposed because of their rulings.

Because Bird’s critics did not request a debate by the 11 a.m. Saturday deadline, the measure was deemed to have passed unanimously.

It had been assumed by most present that out of more than 500 delegates, at least one Bird opponent would have called for a floor argument.

Bird’s foes, who are far less numerous than her supporters at the four-day convention, which concludes today, at the Town and Country Hotel, at least avoided what for them would have been a losing battle.

Some Discontent

Not all Bird supporters were happy with the absence of debate.

“It seemed to me it was a chicken way out,” said Neal C. Tenen, chairman of the San Fernando Valley Bar Assn. Like most of the other 529 members of the Conference of Delegates, he assumed that the debate would be held and that Bird’s position would win.

That way, he said, “the public would know what the State Bar’s position is.”

But on Sunday evening, when one of Bird’s campaign aides checked to see whether a debate had been requested, he discovered that it had not. Not only would the measure backed by Bird pass without discussion, so would two other measures that were even stronger in their pro-court wording.

San Francisco Bar President Jerome B. Falk, who worked throughout the weekend to line up support for Bird’s position, acknowledged after the victory that it would have been “a little more dramatic” to have had the debate and won.