Mosk, High Court’s Elder Statesman, Stays Well Above the Fray

Stanley Mosk’s mother sat at her kitchen table 42 years ago and hand-addressed scores of postcards asking voters to support her son, the judge, and “preserve a fearless and independent judiciary.”

His mother has died and Mosk left the trial court long ago. But in this, his final campaign, Supreme Court Justice Stanley Mosk still keeps his organization in the family. And judging from opinion polls, he will win again--easily.

With help from his son, Richard, Mosk has employed a sophisticated, subtle and behind-the-scenes campaign that has silenced critics who once counted him among their targets for defeat on Nov. 4.

Gov. George Deukmejian, one of the court’s harshest critics, swept away any lingering doubt about Mosk’s support in August by announcing that he would vote for Mosk, even though Mosk has written some of the court’s most far-reaching and controversial decisions of the last two decades. With his support shored up, Mosk will raise no money and mount no visible campaign.

“What’s more effective for him--a 30-second television spot, or having the governor say he’s going to vote for him and the major groups not oppose him? That is better than a $1-million media campaign,” said Stu Mollrich, a media consultant responsible for many anti-court advertisements.

For his part, Mosk calls it “a nice way to run a campaign.” During an interview in the office he has occupied for 22 years, Mosk quipped that “people don’t shun you thinking you’re going to ask them for a contribution.”

He professes to be uncertain why he was not targeted, except that perhaps court critics “may look at the life expectancy tables and figure they will get this seat sooner or later so they might as well relax.”

At 74, Mosk remains one of the court’s most prolific members. He said in an interview early this year, however, that he might quit within four years, which would allow the winner of this year’s gubernatorial race to appoint someone to fill out the rest of Mosk’s 12-year term.

Appointed to the high court in 1964 by Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, Mosk had aspired to be chief justice. But Brown’s son, Edmund G. Brown Jr., passed him over by naming Rose Elizabeth Bird chief justice in 1977. Mosk said he has given up hope of becoming chief justice. However, he has a role that he very much enjoys--that of the court’s elder statesman. With Bird facing defeat, and the campaign against her and other justices tarnishing the court’s standing, Mosk sees that role as being even more important in the future.

“I hope I can be useful in restoring some of the prestige of the court, which has been affected by the political campaign,” Mosk said. “All of that polarization,” he added, “has been unfortunate for the judicial process. I hope that, with my years of experience, I can be helpful in repairing that.”

Active Speaker

Mosk maintains that he is not campaigning, although he acknowledges that his son has placed a few calls. Mosk seems to have stepped up his speaking engagements, although he always has been an active public speaker.

His topics vary from the state Constitution to a speech that is a series of one-liners. Without mentioning his colleagues by name, he gets across his message--that he is different.

He told a class at the University of California, Berkeley, that justices vote as individuals and “expect to be evaluated as individuals.” He told a small gathering at a friend’s Beverly Hills home that although the electorate might “vote all the rascals out,” he has faith that voters will be “more selective.”

Although Mosk says he will vote for his colleagues on Nov. 4, he has distanced himself from the campaigns to reelect the justices by insisting through his son that their campaigns drop any mention of him.

Son’s Demand

Richard Mosk, for example, made such a demand of Justice Cruz Reynoso’s campaign director, Neil Rinkover, in August after Rinkover was quoted in a newspaper article referring to Mosk’s liberal record. Rinkover and Reynoso declined to discuss the matter.

“Richard Mosk went to quite a few places. . . . I don’t think anybody thought it was anything other than a gracious gesture by a son,” said Janet Byers, spokeswoman for the anti-court campaign.

Richard Mosk, a West Los Angeles attorney, described his efforts by saying simply: “I have certainly talked to people on behalf of my father. I don’t think it was necessary. I’m the only son and I do whatever I can for him.”

His father’s biggest fan, Richard Mosk lists law enforcement figures who not only support his father but are his friends, from former Los Angeles police chiefs Tom Redden and Sen. Ed Davis (R-Chatsworth) to San Francisco Dist. Atty. Arlo Smith.

‘Known Quantity’

“Having been in politics, he happens to have friends who are conservative Republicans,” said the younger Mosk. “. . . When it came to various groups--business groups, law enforcement groups, Republican groups--he had the benefit of being a known quantity.”

Father and son are deft at shrugging off criticism. When UC Berkeley law professor Phillip E. Johnson issued a long report critical of the court’s civil rulings, Mosk called him “just another disgruntled law clerk,” a reference to Johnson’s year as a clerk for a state Supreme Court justice.

Richard Mosk, meanwhile, said people who opposed his father were so “new to the scene” that they did not know his record. So Richard took it upon himself to educate them. He took Mollrich to lunch last year to urge that Mollrich’s group, Californians to Defeat Rose Bird, not go after his father. Mollrich declined.

Dropped as Target

However, some leaders of the group, including Davis, did not want to take on Mosk. So early this year, when Californians to Defeat Rose Bird merged with Crime Victims for Court Reform, the other major anti-Bird campaign committee, the coalition dropped Mosk as a target.

“One of my conditions for remaining (with the new group) was that we eliminate Stanley Mosk as a target,” Davis said. Davis called Mosk “an unreconstructed liberal, a dedicated liberal,” an “intellectually honest” one.

“I hope he stays long enough that we have a respectable liberal voice on the new court. . . . We will have a much richer court with him on it,” Davis said.

Davis’ comments are widely echoed. For although the California court’s reputation may have suffered in recent years, Mosk retains a reputation as being among the best state jurists in the country. Ronald K. L. Collins, a law school teacher who has studied state courts, characterized him as “the strongest rebuttal you can make” to claims that the California Supreme Court is in decline.

Far-Reaching Rulings

Still, many people involved in the campaign view it as ironic that Mosk is not a target for defeat, noting that he has issued some of the most far-reaching rulings of the last 22 years, including decisions that have most inflamed the court’s critics.

When Deukmejian issued his list of 31 cases showing the Supreme Court was “anti-business” in 1984, the list included nine opinions by Mosk, more than by any other justice.

He wrote decisions reversing death sentences in at least four cases in which the victims’ family members or friends are spokesmen for the anti-court campaign, including the 1985 ruling overturning the death sentence of Theodore Frank, who was convicted of torturing to death 2-year-old Amy Sue Seitz and dumping her body in Topanga Canyon.

He is the justice who is most responsible for developing the technique of resting more liberal opinions on the state Constitution rather than on the federal Constitution. The court uses this technique to place more constraints on law enforcement than the more conservative U.S. Supreme Court requires.

Ruling on Quotas

He also has written opinions that have pleased conservatives, including President Reagan, who wrote Mosk a letter praising the justice’s 1976 ruling prohibiting the University of California from imposing quotas that allowed less qualified minority students to be admitted at the expense of whites. The ruling came in the case of Allan Bakke, a white, who had been refused admission to the UC Davis Medical School, and allowed Bakke to enter the school. The court since has upheld racial quotas, over Mosk’s dissent.

Mosk had just gotten out of law school in 1939 when he began his political career as executive secretary to Gov. Culbert Olson, a one-term governor and New Deal liberal. Olson appointed Mosk to the Superior Court in Los Angeles in 1942, and Mosk remained there until 1958, when he was elected attorney general. He was reelected in 1962.

A powerful vote getter and popular Democrat, Mosk considered running for U.S. Senate in the mid-1960s. But Mosk said he wanted a career on the bench more than one in partisan politics. He was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1964. In his early years on the court, Mosk often sided with conservatives on cases such as the death penalty and wrote several opinions upholding death sentences.

‘Onion Field’ Case

But he also wrote opinions overturning notable death sentences, among them the 1967 ruling ordering new trials for Gregory Ulas Powell and Jimmy Smith, who had been sentenced to death for murdering a Los Angeles police officer. Author Joseph Wambaugh wrote about the case in the book and movie, “The Onion Field.”

In 1972, Mosk voted with the majority in a 6-1 ruling that declared capital punishment unconstitutional. The sentences of more than 100 Death Row inmates, including Powell, Sirhan Sirhan and Charles Manson were reduced to life in prison. Voters reinstated capital punishment later that year, but Mosk remains opposed to it.

“The day will come when all mankind will deem killing to be immoral, whether committed by an individual or many individuals organized into a state,” he wrote in a 1979 death penalty case, perhaps his most impassioned opinion. However, acknowledging voters’ right to reinstate capital punishment, Mosk added: “I recognize the melancholy truth that the anticipated dawn of enlightenment does not seem destined to appear soon.”

Pace Quickens

Under the death penalty laws passed in 1977 and 1978, Mosk has voted more than 20 times to uphold death sentences, more than any other justice. The pace has quickened noticeably since last December. He has voted to uphold 14 of the last 15 death case rulings since then.

“I don’t think I’ve changed significantly in that area,” Mosk said. He added that more death sentences will be affirmed in coming months because the justices have “ironed out most of the bugs and flaws in the death penalty law of 1978.”

As the campaign over the reelection of Bird, Reynoso and Justice Joseph Grodin nears its end, Mosk remains above the fray--to the disappointment of those who are trying to reelect the justices. An active role by Mosk, with his longevity, political savvy and respect, could have helped their cause. But campaign aides to the justices are careful not to say anything critical of Mosk.

“He is endorsing the reelection of all the justices, but that expression of support is all we will see of Justice Mosk in a campaign context,” said Harold Meyerson, head of an independent campaign committee that is working to reelect all justices.

Mosk’s decision to stay on the sidelines was a canny political move, said Janet Byers, spokeswoman for the campaign to oust the three justices. “It’s those who are up front and vocal who call attention to what they’re doing. A low profile pays off.”