‘Law and Order’ Judge Takes Over Key Appeals Court Post : Judiciary: J. Clifford Wallace becomes chief judge of the nation’s largest circuit court of appeals. A defense attorney calls him bright but heartless.

Judge J. Clifford Wallace, who has become the most important judge in the most important and least-known court in all the West, is a big believer in regimentation and structure.

Especially in the way he approaches the little things in life. At his downtown San Diego office, he even has a strict system for drinking soda.

He drinks Tab. Not more trendy Diet Coke--he’s brand loyal. Only one calorie--critical, since he rides a stationary bike in the office each and every workday while reviewing newly issued opinions.

The soda goes on the right side of the desk. Always. Never on the left--that’s for current business, neatly wrapped in a rubber band, in a single pile, but not too high.

The can always rests on an oversized, brightly colored ashtray, a gift that reminds him of former clients and saves the desktop from an unsightly water spot. When the last sip of soda is gone, the can goes promptly in the trash and the ashtray is returned to the top drawer of a bureau behind him, ready for the next time.

Law--and order. That’s what Wallace, who took over Friday as chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, is all about. “I’m a clean-desk person,” he said. “I like to know everything I have to do and then make a value decision as to what is the important thing for me to do at that particular time.”

Four times considered for the U.S. Supreme Court, and four times passed over, Wallace is a noted conservative who has earned the enmity of liberals, particularly criminal defense attorneys, for his hard-line opinions. “He’s very bright,” said San Diego criminal defense lawyer John Cleary. “But heartless.”

With the Supreme Court apparently out of reach, Wallace has made himself in recent years into a specialist in the arcane world of judicial administration--the business of running a court. For the past eight years, he has even spent his vacations studying courts, often overseas.

As boss of the 9th Circuit, the 62-year-old Wallace takes over the largest judicial empire in the 13 federal circuits. The 9th is made up of nine Western states--including California--as well as two Pacific territories, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

And Wallace is the first chief judge in the 100-year history of the circuit to be based in San Diego.

He made it plain that, with no Supreme Court spot in the offing, it’s a job he’s glad to have and wants to do for a while. He can be chief judge for seven years, until he is 69, or he can choose to step down in three years, when he turns 65. “It’s been no secret that this is something I really want to do,” he said.

If only, he said in a recent interview, people understood what exactly it is the 9th Circuit does.

Really, he said, they ought not only to know but to care deeply, like he does, and to understand the structure of the federal courts.

Despite its importance, the 9th Circuit, which manages more than 5,000 cases a year, is not particularly well known. Arna Thompson, the wife of David R. Thompson, the other 9th Circuit judge based in San Diego, gave a talk last year to a community group about his job. The speech was entitled, “The Court Nobody Knows.”

The circuit courts decide appeals from the trial courts, which are known as the district courts. The U.S. Supreme Court takes appeals from the circuit courts--but because the Supreme Court decides so few cases, it’s in the circuits that most federal issues are thrashed out, including the weighty issues of civil and constitutional rights.

The 9th Circuit’s clerks and its offices are in San Francisco, but its judges--28 full-time and 10 part-time--live all over the West, from San Diego to Juneau and from Boise to Honolulu. In three-judge panels, they meet for hearings in various cities, then issue opinions at San Francisco, Pasadena, Portland and Seattle.

“I would point out that our decisions are final in 99% of the cases, (since) the Supreme Court only takes about 1% of all cases,” Wallace said. “So that the determination of whether rights are preserved and protected, in the federal sense, will be determined by our court, in almost every case.

“Therefore (people) should have a great interest in that court,” he said.

Wallace also passionately believes that more people would be fascinated--as he is--in judicial administration, if they knew more about it.

“You could have the most important rights spelled out in statutes and constitutions, but they wouldn’t be worth the paper they’re written on, in the final analysis, unless there’s a court system that can deliver justice,” Wallace said. “And judicial administration is what that is all about.”

For 15 years, Wallace has written on, lectured on and studied the topic extensively. On his resume--which his staff, just as efficient as he is, volunteered to a visitor well before a meeting with the judge--two of the 13 pages are devoted to his work in administration.

Running a federal appeals court is unlike running a corporation, Wallace said, because all the judges have been appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate and enjoy lifetime tenure, making consensus-building an elusive prospect. His first article on the topic was subtitled, “A Tribe With Only Chiefs.”

The chief judge heads the circuit’s governing council and reviews complaints about judicial misconduct. He or she also travels frequently to Washington for meetings with representatives of other courts around the country.

With help from Wallace, changes in the way the court does its work, implemented in the mid-1980s by then-Chief Judge James R. Browning, probably saved the 9th Circuit. “I consulted him perhaps more than any other judge in court,” Browning said last week.

As it grew from nine judges to more than 20, the court was taking longer to process cases than any other court in the country--17 months. Talk was heard of splitting it into two--or more--courts.

With predominantly liberal appointees, the 9th Circuit was reversed 27 of 28 times by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1984, inviting comparisons in news accounts to the 1961 Philadelphia Phillies baseball team, which lost a then-record 23 games in a row.

About then, judges began communicating on computer by electronic mail, speeding the exchange of opinions. It’s because of that system, as well as the fax machine, the telephone and the overnight mail that Wallace said he can stay in San Diego and still be chief.

Meanwhile, the number of cases decided without oral argument was substantially increased. As a result, the number of cases each judge handled jumped 27% in one year.

Among other changes, a system was set up so that cases raising similar issues were directed to the same panel of judges, to prevent conflicts and overlap.

The reversal statistic changed, too, in part because of chance and in part because of 13 Reagan-Bush appointees to the court. In the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1990 term, the 9th Circuit’s reversal rate was down to 12.3%, exactly in the middle of the 13 circuits, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts in Washington.

The controversy over splitting the court, however, remains a nearly annual battle. Last year, it was led by members of Congress from Washington and Oregon, who contended that the 9th Circuit, dominated by California judges, did not understand Northwest concerns in timber and environmental cases.

Wallace, who expects more go-rounds about division during his term, said he remains committed to the court’s current structure. He said it has many positives, including the ability to develop “regional law.”

“If you’re shipping from Hawaii, it doesn’t matter whether you enter San Diego, Los Angeles, Portland or Seattle, you’re going to have the same law,” Wallace said. “It’s the only seaboard on the U.S. that offers that benefit. So there are some interesting pluses to large-size circuits.”

Despite his partiality for structure, Wallace is not averse to experimentation in the courts--that is, within limits and as long as the ground rules are set first. Then Wallace is “actually very flexible,” said Ginny LePre, his administrative assistant for the past 34 years.

For instance, this summer the 9th Circuit is due to become one of two federal appeals courts experimenting with television and radio coverage of court proceedings. Though most state courts, including California’s, have permitted cameras for about 10 years, the federal courts have never allowed them.

Wallace said he was “very pleased” that his court would be in on the trial project. But, he said, by April the judges “do want to have appropriate guidelines set out so that those that want to bring cameras into the court will know in advance how we would like to have it function.”

The most important item now on the 9th Circuit agenda, however, is to get its staff back into regular quarters, he said.

Since the Oct. 17, 1989, earthquake, the staff has camped out in temporary space above a Carl’s Jr. restaurant near City Hall in San Francisco. This summer, it is scheduled to move into office space in downtown San Francisco.

Other than that, he said, his primary goal is to look at the structure--what else--of court committees. The thought, he said, is that judges should be judging, not serving on committees that can be staffed by staffers.

Although Wallace is an expert in administration, he inherited the chief judge’s job based only on seniority.

Appointed to the 9th Circuit in 1972 by President Nixon, he is the senior full-time judge on the court under age 65. He replaces Judge Alfred T. Goodwin, who took over from Browning in 1988 and has said he simply wants to work less and enjoy life more. Goodwin stepped down Thursday.

Wallace came to the 9th Circuit after about two years as a federal district court judge. Born and raised in San Diego, he had been a lawyer at the city’s largest law firm, Gray, Cary, Ames & Frye, before taking the bench.

In 1975, Wallace was told he was one of the three finalists considered by President Ford for the spot on the U.S. Supreme Court that Ford eventually gave to John Paul Stevens. His name has popped up since when Supreme Court vacancies have occurred, but no luck.

Wallace said it is gratifying simply to have been considered. Talking about it once with an older judge, he said, the judge told him, “ ‘Well, Cliff, it’s good to be trotted out with the prize cattle.’ ”

Wallace said, “So I don’t feel any despondency or dejectment.”

Over the years, Wallace has written scores of opinions faithful to his notions of structure and of separation of powers. That doctrine teaches that courts should not intrude on social issues because those are the province of the legislature.

Wallace’s notion of justice starts with a primary regard for the integrity of the law. He has a dramatically lesser interest in the human consequences of a decision. “From my point of view, I would not want to modify what I think is the law that governs me under the feeling that I want to show my compassion,” he said.

It’s that attitude that draws the ire of the criminal defense bar.

“Unfortunately, in criminal cases, I know there have been one or two reversals (of convictions) he has signed, but they are few and far between,” San Diego attorney Cleary said. “You get the feeling, ‘Why are you wasting the court’s time?’ by raising cases before him.”

Wallace is perhaps best known in recent years for a dissent in one of the complicated court fights involving reputed Mexican drug dealer Rene Verdugo-Urquidez.

In Los Angeles, Verdugo-Urquidez was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 1985 killing of U.S. Drug Enforcement Agent Enrique Camarena.

In a separate smuggling case that has yet to go to trial in San Diego, Verdudo-Urquidez challenged the legality of a January, 1988, raid on his house in Mexicali, Mexico, where DEA agents found tally sheets that prosecutors contend is evidence of marijuana smuggling.

In a 2-1 decision, a 9th Circuit majority--Thompson, the other San Diego-based judge, and Judge William Norris--ruled in August, 1988, that the search was illegal and the evidence inadmissible because the U.S. agents did not have a warrant to search the house.

Wallace dissented.

The Constitution was conceived as a “social contract” among the “people” of the United States, Wallace said. Since Verdugo-Urquidez, a Mexican, is not one of those “people,” he could seek no protection from the 4th Amendment on a raid in Mexico, he said.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the 9th Circuit ruling, adopting Wallace’s rationale for its ruling.

As chief judge, Wallace will hear far fewer cases, about a 50% caseload the first year. “That is the good news,” Cleary said.

But he also will be in on every en banc hearing, 11-judge boards convened to reconsider sensitive or technical decisions issued by the three-judge panels. “Unfortunately,” Cleary said.

Wallace said criticism that he is, as he put it, “uncaring and unfeeling,” has to be seen in the proper context.

A devout Mormon, he is active in his church, he said. He also devotes considerable time to a Boy Scout troop in Southeast San Diego’s black and Latino communities.

It’s just, he said, that he sees those things as separate from his world on the bench. So that’s how he structures it in his head.

“My feeling on it is that you have to be able to rule on the law, rule on the Constitution, the way the founders had in mind, the way they’ve been interpreted by the (U.S.) Supreme Court,” he said. “But you should have another side of your life in which you show how you care.”