Courthouse Named for the Late Justice Mosk

The main civil courthouse at 1st and Hill streets in downtown Los Angeles was renamed for the late California Supreme Court Justice Stanley Mosk on Monday in a ceremony at the Music Center attended by leading political and judicial officials.

State Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald George, Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn and the chairman of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, Zev Yaroslavsky, were among the speakers.

Mosk, the longest-serving member of the state Supreme Court, also served 16 years on the Los Angeles Superior Court and six years as attorney general of California. He died last year at 88 of a heart attack, on the day he was to retire from nearly 37 years on the high court.

George, noting that a majority of the current state Supreme Court justices were present at Monday’s ceremonies, said that renaming the courthouse was “a fitting tribute” to a leader for civil rights. The name should inspire judges and lawyers who practice there “to live up to the name of the building,” he said.

Hahn said he was pleased that in the long block between 1st and Temple streets along Hill Street, the County Hall of Administration is named for his father, the late Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, and the courthouse opposite for Mosk. Both men, he said, “bettered justice, fought for the little guy, and both were great Democrats.”

Mosk’s son, Richard M. Mosk, a newly appointed state Court of Appeal justice, recalled that his father loved being a Superior Court judge, beginning at age 30 in 1942, and later presiding over proceedings involving actor Charlie Chaplin and the divorce case of Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe.