Before voters removed three Democratic-appointed justices from the California Supreme Court in 1986, two Republican-appointed justices privately but unsuccessfully asked the Governor not to campaign against one of the three. The disclosure was made during the court’s November memorial session for that one justice, Joseph Grodin, who died at 94 in April of last year.
Jake Dear, who was a staff attorney to Grodin during the justice’s last two years on the court and who later served 15 years as the court’s Chief Supervising Attorney, recounted that Grodin colleagues then-Associate Justices Malcolm Lucas and Edward Panelli “implored [Governor George Deukmejian] not to come out against Justice Grodin.” (See starting around 5:10 of this video.) Republican Deukmejian had appointed both Lucas and Panelli to the court.
Justices Lucas and Panelli told Deukmejian that Grodin should remain on the court because “Grodin was someone who had an open mind and was willing to consider that his view might be wrong and others might be right,” Dear said. The entreaties were in vain, as Deukmejian urged voters to reject Grodin along with Chief Justice Rose Bird and Justice Cruz Reynoso.
Dear called the Lucas and Panelli efforts “significant, unrecorded history” that “I understood at the time and I’ve reconfirmed with a contemporaneous court colleague.”
In an oral history, Grodin said that, because of Deukmejian’s “role in the . . . retention election,” Grodin found it “a bit ironic” that Deukmejian was later given a Judicial Council award for Deukmejian’s contributions to the judicial system.
Related:
Video of program with Justice Grodin about the 1986 retention election
