Today is Day 362 since Justice Kathryn Werdegar announced her retirement, and Cheryl Miller explains in The Recorder [subscription] that Werdegar, “like everyone else in the California legal community, continues to wait for [Governor Jerry] Brown” to name a replacement. (I’m quoted in the article.) The puzzling delay has been discussed here and elsewhere before. (See, e.g., here, here, here, and here.)
The article also states that guessing whom Governor Brown will appoint “leads to a seemingly fruitless parlor game since the governor’s most recent three Supreme Court picks — with the possible exception of Mariano-Florentino Cuellar — were not on anyone’s radar.” Actually, the appointment of Justice Goodwin Liu was not off everyone’s radar.
Retired Justice Carlos Moreno is quoted in the article discussing the institutional problem of using temporary justices to fill the vacancy, especially when a pro tem justice is in the majority on a 4-3 decision, which occurred late last year. Justice Moreno says that such an opinion “doesn’t give full guidance as to what a fully staffed court might do in the future. The opinion has kind of questionable standing. The court has not spoken with a full voice.”
