She would effectively be the head of the third branch of government, and her decisions would have far-reaching consequences. Guerrero would be taking on both a judicial and administrative job, said Natasha Minsker, policy advisor for Smart Justice California, which advocates for policies it hopes lessen reliance on incarceration. Guerrero racked up immediate public support from state Senate Judiciary Committee chairperson Tom Umberg and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon. “The judge in my case doesn’t have to look like me, but it shouldn’t be true that there are no judges who look like me.” “Doing so is crucial to both the perception and the reality that those who administer justice reflect the state’s diversity,” Carrillo wrote. Carrillo, executive director of Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center, said in an email that diversifying the court first became a priority under former Gov. Newsom seemingly split the difference, nominating a sitting justice who was just elevated to the Supreme Court in March.ĭavid A. “The judge in my case doesn’t have to look like me, but it shouldn’t be true that there are no judges who look like me.” David Carillo, Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center When trying to read the tea leaves on the next chief justice, handicappers look at the history of elevating sitting justices versus choosing someone entirely new. “It builds trust in the system that represents you.” “They had more confidence in the judiciary,” Torres said. Supreme Court found that Latinos were more aware and approving of the court after her appointment. Cornell Law School researchers found that judges, like everyone else, have implicit biases that can affect their rulings.Īnd in a 2012 comparative study of white judges and judges of color, a Northwestern University law professor found that white judges were particularly more likely to dismiss cases involving plaintiffs of color than those involving white plaintiffs.īut the way individual judges rule on specific cases matters less than the perception of justice, said Helen Torres, CEO of Hispanas Organized for Political Equality.Ī 2016 study in Texas of Latino attitudes on justice after the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Results from studies trying to tease out the link between race or ethnicity and judicial conduct have been mixed.Ī Yale study found that having Black judges made white judges adhere more closely to sentencing equity for both Black and white defendants. Race alone, of course, does not dictate how someone will rule on cases. A CalMatters series last year found significant under-representation in many county courts - and four California counties with no Latino superior court judges, despite the fact that the counties’ populations were majority Latino. Latinos, by contrast, make up just 12% of trial court judges and 7% of judges in the appellate court, though they make up 39% of the state. More than 62% of all trial court judges are white, as are more than 70% of appellate court judges. The numbers in 2022 remain grim for Latinos overall in California’s judiciary. “I’ll be happy when I start writing about seconds and thirds.” “I’ve been here 32 years, and it’s surprising to me that even in the year 2022, I’m still writing about firsts for Latinos,” Loera said. But he’s happy he gets to write about another “first-in-history.” Juan Esparza Loera, editor of the Fresno Spanish-language newspaper Vida en el Valle, said he was surprised by Guerrero’s nomination to chief justice so soon after she was sworn in. Newsom called her “a widely respected jurist with a formidable intellect and command of the law.” A colleague at her Fourth District confirmation hearing in 2017 recalled how she finished a brief on her way to give birth to her son, and coordinated filing the brief hours later. She grew up in the Imperial Valley, and her parents were immigrants from Mexico, and graduated from Stanford Law School. Already the high court’s first Latina after her March swearing-in, Guerrero would also be the court’s first Latina chief justice.Ī former lawyer in private practice, Guerrero was also a federal prosecutor before she became a judge in San Diego County Superior Court and, in 2017, became an appellate judge in California’s Fourth District Court of Appeal. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday nominated Guerrero, 50, to be chief justice of the California Supreme Court. In a state that doesn’t have many Latinas either sitting on the judicial bench or arguing cases before it, Patricia Guerrero would make history as chief justice on California’s highest court. She would be the first Latina chief in a state where Latinos are under-represented on the bench. Gavin Newsom has nominated sitting Supreme Court justice Patricia Guerrero to be the high court’s chief justice.
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