Friends, Colleagues Eulogize Former Justice Broussard

The theater where Allen Broussard became a California Supreme Court justice 15 years ago was the scene of his memorial service Friday, as colleagues and friends saluted the liberal jurist and noted the changing times.

“We may be suffering reverses. Maybe people like Allen Broussard don’t get appointed to supreme courts any more,” said former Gov. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr., who named the longtime Alameda County judge to the high court in 1981.

But he cited Broussard’s continuing legacy, such as the 1983 ruling that “saved Mono Lake” by establishing the state’s authority to restrict diversions of water from lakes and streams for environmental protection.

Broussard’s major rulings also included a 1989 decision upholding most of Proposition 103, the insurance rate regulation initiative, and a 1983 decision requiring proof of intent to kill in most death penalty cases.

That ruling was overturned by the court in 1987, over Broussard’s lone dissent.

He died of cancer Tuesday at 67. The second black justice in the court’s history, Broussard was a bulwark of the majority on the Rose Elizabeth Bird court through 1986, then became the leading dissenter on the conservative Malcolm Lucas court until his retirement in 1991.

He died the same day voters passed Proposition 209, which bans state and local government affirmative action programs. San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown drew a connection by asserting that “the same people who showed up in great numbers to vote for Prop. 209” were the ones who voted to remove liberal justices in the 1980s.

Bird and two colleagues were voted out in 1986, but Broussard survived a less intensive conservative opposition campaign in 1982 and did not have to run in 1986. “Allen never had a black last name, and those people were so stupid they couldn’t find him,” Brown said in explaining Broussard’s 1982 victory.

Bird made a rare public appearance, a day after undergoing her second mastectomy for breast cancer, to pay tribute to her former colleague.

“He was a scholar of the law but was never given his proper due,” she said. “In a society still racist . . . a black jurist just didn’t fit the image of a scholar.”

Bird also said Broussard “was fun to be around, and that’s a blessing on a court that often took itself too seriously.”

Broussard also was praised by current Justice Joyce Kennard, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and black lawyers who revered him as a role model and mentor.