In the aftermath of last week’s bar exam debacle, the California Constitution Center’s David Carrillo (executive director) and Stephen Duvernay (senior research fellow) write in The Recorder, “The California Supreme Court’s limited oversight of the bar is a separation-of-powers violation, and the court should remedy that by taking direct control of the bar.”
The opinion piece asserts that, “except for . . . rare instances, the court has long lacked true control over the bar” and it pegs “the modern decline in the court’s power over the bar [as beginning] in 1988 when Chief Justice Malcolm Lucas instituted internal reforms that included transferring attorney discipline cases to a new State Bar Court.”
By statute, the Supreme Court appoints only five of the State Bar’s 13-member board of trustees, with the Governor or Legislature naming the majority of eight, including six non-attorney “public” members. (Bus. & Prof. Code sections 6013.1, 6013.3, and 6013.5.) Carrillo and Duvernay claim that “[a]llowing the other branches to control the bar, a judicial branch agency with rule-making power . . . , exceeds the regulatory power and defeats the core judicial power over the legal profession.” It’s time for the court to “eject the bar’s leadership . . . and take command,” they urge.
