Fighting for a People’s Court

As an undergraduate at Princeton University, Ronald M. George used to startle his roommates with a peculiar habit during thunderstorms: He would stick his head out of a top-floor window and shout defiantly in the pounding rain lines from “King Lear”: “Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks!”

Nearly 40 years later, that shouting student is California’s chief justice, presiding over a Supreme Court that for the first time in two decades is becoming unpredictable. Whether he is tweaking the court’s staid image with practical jokes (he once put a bug-eyed salmon in a fellow judge’s commode) or taking on the role of court lightning rod by writing its most controversial opinions, George has never lost his penchant for sticking his neck out.

Appointed chief justice last year after five years on the high court, George assigned himself the unenviable task of writing an explosive abortion ruling, even though he knew it all but guaranteed a campaign to yank him off the bench.

He was right. No sooner had he led a 4-3 vote in August to strike down the law requiring parental consent for teenage abortions than abortion opponents cranked up efforts to overturn the ruling and oust him.

They have a formidable foe in George, who has spent the last year roaming the state seeking to build a constituency for the court system he now heads.

Although past chief justices traditionally have been remote robed figures, George has embarked on a series of road trips to make the court--like himself--approachable.

His pace has been stupefying. With a well-worn map and a yellow marker in his pocket, George has kept his promise to visit each of California’s 58 counties and their courts.

Hopping small planes or cruising in his state-issued Ford Taurus, the lanky chief justice poked his head in courthouse after courthouse. He was often appalled by what he saw.

He met a San Luis Obispo County judge who, fearing for his safety, improvised a bulletproof shield from stacked lawbooks because there was no money for security. He found another judge in Plumas County working in a broom closet converted to chambers. Earlier this year he hastily arranged to cut a check to keep an Alpine County court from closing its doors.

George also has fielded calls on a South-Central Los Angeles radio station, addressed a gay lawyers group and pleaded for lawyers to donate time to the poor. He reported for jury duty, visited tribal courts and haunted the hallways of the Legislature in Sacramento.

“Instead of having the court seen as an aloof institution, which is much easier to demonize, [people] realize it is open to give and take,” said George, a moderate appointed by Gov. Pete Wilson.

Moving the Court Toward the Center

George’s openness to such give and take may explain the court’s recent shift to the center politically. During the 1970s and ‘80s, under then-Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, the court often ruled in ways that pleased political liberals.

Chief Justice Malcolm Lucas, George’s predecessor, swung the court in the opposite direction, delivering predictable victories to business and jump-starting enforcement of the death penalty.

But with George at the helm, the court is creeping from the right toward the middle. The court has continued to uphold death penalty convictions, but when it comes to civil disputes, George is as likely to rule for workers as for big business and side with victims in sex and age discrimination cases.

He has been the swing vote in many recent decisions, voting sometimes with the three most conservative justices, other times with the trio of justices who range from liberal to moderately conservative.

The court’s shift has annoyed some conservatives, who had counted the 57-year-old former prosecutor as one of their own. And those who applaud the court’s move toward the center still have reservations about whether George will live up to what they see as his shining debut.

“I sometimes wonder if there is a bit too much PR and a bit too little substance,” said Steven Barnett, a UC Berkeley law professor. Others question whether George has established too broad an agenda. Even friends worry that he may be spreading himself too thin.

“There can come a point where you have grabbed too much, where the risks you are taking are too great,” said McGeorge School of Law professor J. Clark Kelso. “If you start to reach too far in a leadership position, that can be a fault.

“I don’t see that happening yet, but there is no question that he is way out in front on a lot of issues that are contentious and where it is not at all clear where the end result is going to be. . . . At which point does Ron George’s energy outstrip the rest of us?”

George’s drive comes in part from a strong sense of self-confidence, a belief that he can accomplish what others cannot. This has irked some judges, who have derided him for being excessively ambitious.

“Ron is not falsely humble,” said author Darcy O’Brien, a friend and classmate at Beverly Hills High School. “He is not arrogant but he doesn’t make false protests of humility, and I think this irritates some people.”

The chief justice’s zeal for work is matched by his delight in pranks. His behind-the-scene antics are legendary among fellow judges.

It was when he served on the state Court of Appeal in Los Angeles that he slipped into a colleague’s bathroom and propped a frozen salmon head in a toilet. George gleefully waited nearby as the judge relieved himself and began shrieking.

George also has inserted silly lines, such as “the dish ran away with the spoon,” into drafts of court opinions circulated for comment. He would tease colleagues who missed them about shirking their duties.

But in his black robe on the bench, George is the picture of decorum. He can shred a lawyer’s arguments in the most earnest and politest of tones or, if he favors a lawyer’s case, shore it up with questions that elicit answers that mirror his own views.

He is legally conservative: He believes judges should defer to the Legislature and the governor. He also is pragmatic, pointing out that the judiciary is the weakest of the three branches and, for reasons of self-preservation, should not deliberately incite legislators.

But when he decided to write the abortion ruling, George had in mind preservation of the court’s independence, not his judicial career. He faces voters for confirmation to a 12-year term in 1998.

Striking down a law is not necessarily defying public will, he said, but following “the ultimate expression of the public’s will”--the Constitution. He argued that the abortion consent law conflicted with privacy rights guaranteed by the state Constitution.

“I thought I should take the heat and responsibility,” he said. “The court, whatever it does, should not be intimidated.”

Despite his affable manner--he often appears to be holding back a joke and his brown eyes light up at any hint of irony--George can be deadly serious and fiercely stubborn when his mind is made up.

After becoming chief justice, he set out to thaw relations with the Legislature that had been strained since the court upheld term limits several years ago.

Chagrined by conditions he saw during his travels, George wanted the Legislature to provide a more secure financial base for California’s justice system so counties could not slash budgets when financial pressures set in.

George became such a frequent Sacramento presence that one legislator said she would support court funding because she was embarrassed to see the chief justice in the hall with lobbyists.

“The Legislature is all about personal relationships, and I think the chief has realized that,” said Assemblywoman Martha Escutia (D-Bell), head of the Judiciary Committee. “You see him in the hallways. You see him waiting in the offices of other legislators, waiting his turn.”

George’s efforts paid off last month when the Legislature passed and Wilson signed a landmark court funding bill. It had been considered a longshot, yet George staked his reputation on it.

O’Brien, one of his Princeton roommates, said George has long been a risk-taker. “He even drives fast,” O’Brien said.

Nearly two decades ago as a Superior Court judge, George took a career-threatening risk while presiding over the “Hillside Strangler” case.

John K. Van de Kamp, then Los Angeles district attorney, decided to drop charges against suspected serial killer Angelo Buono after Buono’s accomplice stopped cooperating with authorities. The prosecution contended that there was too little evidence to convict Buono.

Judges routinely go along with such motions by prosecutors. But George not only denied the motion but suggested in veiled language that Van de Kamp’s political ambitions made him reluctant to risk defeat in the high-profile case.

The state attorney general’s office took over the prosecution.

“If the trial had ended without a conviction, it would have made Ron look like an idiot,” said O’Brien, who wrote a book about the case, the nation’s longest criminal trial at the time.

Barbara George, an interior designer who married her husband 31 years ago, recalled his words after he made the ruling: “ ‘Barbara, you better prepare yourself. This . . . could become known as George’s folly.’ ”

The jury convicted Buono of nine murders and sentenced him to life in prison without parole in 1984. George said at the time that he wished Buono had been condemned to die.

To relieve the stress of the trial, George took up running. It became an obsession.

He was still trekking up mountainsides until he broke his hip water-skiing at Lake Tahoe in August. He got up on two skis and tried to drop one. It caught in the wake instead.

George, now moving with a cane while he recovers, works out of spacious chambers in a state building in San Francisco, his wall of windows overlooking the Bay Bridge. His desk is often cluttered, and he confesses that he has yet to master computers. He describes himself as “road kill on the information highway.”

Other justices call him a considerate and collegial team builder. As chief justice, George is more a “man of the people” than some predecessors, said state Supreme Court Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar. Within the court, however, he does not force his views, she said.

“He has an open mind when he goes into an issue, that is for sure,” Werdegar said. “But when he concludes where the law takes him, he is not going to depart from that.”

“He has boundless energy,” said Associate Justice Ming W. Chin. “It makes it hard for the rest of us to keep up.”

George does not shy away from the news media and has tried to broaden coverage of the state high court by changing ruling times to accommodate news deadlines and inviting reporters to informal question-and-answer sessions.

George and his wife live in a co-op apartment in San Francisco and maintain their home in Beverly Hills. Their three sons are grown. The eldest, a lawyer, works for Wilson’s legal affairs office.

When George received a jury summons last summer, he decided he could not excuse himself after campaigning for more people to serve. So he reported to the Beverly Hills courthouse.

A panel call came for a three-week medical malpractice trial. Would anyone not be able to serve beyond 10 days, the judge asked.

George stood up, explaining he had a business trip planned.

The judge did a double-take when he gave his name. “Oh my God, we have the chief justice here,” she told the crowded room.

George was not picked for a panel but came away convinced that jurors should spend only one day on jury duty unless chosen for a trial that day.

Just as he floored the judge by reporting for jury duty, George has impressed local dignitaries with his far-flung visits. “Man, it blew me away when I heard he was coming,” said Duane Sherman Sr., chairman of a the Hoopa Valley Indian tribe, whose court George visited in August.

Widely Traveled Chief Justice

George was on the Hoopa reservation near Eureka during the summer when the Supreme Court announced the abortion ruling. The remote setting was a calming antidote to the furor the ruling was causing in Sacramento and elsewhere.

But talk radio reaches the reservation, and tribal leaders who had listened to angry callers denounce the abortion decision prodded George to talk about it.

Are you going to be the next Rose Bird? tribal Chairman Sherman, mischief in his eyes, ventured at breakfast.

The chief justice, eating quiche and fruit from a paper plate, chuckled dryly. “I wouldn’t say that too loud,” he admonished. The next day, anti-abortion protesters picketed him in Eureka.

Abortion opponents have targeted George and Chin, who also faces confirmation next year and also voted against the abortion law. Assemblyman Bill Morrow (R-San Diego) predicts that some legislators will join the recall effort.

“When the court places a foot in that political arena, they have to stand by the consequences,” said Morrow, who opposed the abortion ruling but admires George.

Wilson promises to oppose the removal of his appointees, and Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren is unlikely to support their ouster even though he plans to work to reinstate the abortion consent law.

Antiabortion activists said they have not yet put together a formal campaign for 1998, but will oppose George and Chin in leaflets and mailers. They also will comb other court rulings looking for potential ammunition, said Jan Carroll, associate western director of the National Right to Life.

She cited a ruling George joined that prevented a Christian landlady from refusing to rent to unmarried couples.

Other potential land mines are pending before the court, among them a case that will determine whether the Boy Scouts of America should be required to admit gays and atheists.

Calling George “unafraid,” retired state Supreme Court Justice Armand Arabian said George is “the perfect person to stand up to this kind of assault.”

Although polls have shown that most California voters favor abortion rights, retention votes for judges have grown tighter in recent years. Political and legal analysts say George and Chin will at the least have to wage an effort to keep their seats.

“It is going to require a campaign,” said University of Santa Clara law professor Gerald F. Uelmen, who has studied recall campaigns against state Supreme Court justices nationwide.

George so far has made no formal plans to confront the threat and insists it will not affect how he decides cases.

“If you had to be looking over your shoulder and worrying about the election,” George said, irritated, “the job wouldn’t be worth having.”

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Profile: Ronald M. George

* Position: Chief Justice, California Supreme Court

* Education: Juris doctorate, Stanford Law School, 1964. Graduated 1961 from Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University.

* Career highlights: Former deputy state attorney general. Named to Los Angeles County Municipal Court by Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1972. Elevated to Los Angeles County Superior Court by Gov. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr. in 1977. Served as president of California Judges Assn., 1982-83. Named to state Court of Appeal by Gov. George Deukmejian in 1987. Appointed to Supreme Court in 1991 by Gov. Pete Wilson and elevated to chief justice in 1996.

* Personal: Born in Los Angeles. Married with three children.

* Quote: “I think it is very important to show that the court will not be intimidated by external political forces. The court is not an institution that should make its decisions based upon the way the political winds are blowing.”