State Supreme Court Doesn’t Need ‘Stars’

Re “Davis Should Seek a Star for Court,” Commentary, July 9: Professor Stephen Barnett is correct in urging Gov. Gray Davis to appoint to the California Supreme Court an exceptional talent akin to the late Justice Stanley Mosk. However, his characterization of the current members of the California Supreme Court is way off base.

Critiquing the justices as too “inbred” because they were all once judges in the Court of Appeal ignores the invaluable experience they acquired by analyzing issues and writing opinions in the appellate court. Denigrating the Supreme Court as “over-attached to its existing ways of doing things” fails to grasp that the proper role of the court in our legal system is to set forth precedents that can be predictably relied upon by practitioners regardless of which way the political winds are blowing.

As a criminal defense attorney specializing in appellate issues, I don’t always like how they rule, yet I have found the surviving members of the Supreme Court superbly able and competent in settling our state’s legal disputes.

Alex Ricciardulli

Los Angeles