Rose Bird recalled as brilliant legal trailblazer
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/1999/12/06/NEWS13041.dtlFriends and old colleagues of former California Chief Justice Rose Bird remembered her as a pioneer - and one of the most passionate politicians in the state's history - as plans were being made for her memorial services.
Bird died Saturday of complications from an extremely complex case of breast cancer, said Jay Thorwaldson, a spokesman at the Palo Alto Medical Center, where she had received treatment for several years. She was 63.
Rose Elizabeth Bird headed the state's high court for nine years and nine months - one of the longest terms to date. She was voted out of office in 1986 largely because of her opposition to the death penalty, and spent much of the last decade living a reclusive life in Palo Alto.
"She was a strong force that tried to inject a more populist perspective into the judiciary," said Jerry Brown, now mayor of Oakland. "Right to the end, she was a person that had very, very high ideals and a real acute sense of protecting the underdog."
Then-Gov. Brown named Bird chief justice in February 1977, making her the first woman appointed to the position in California.
She was narrowly confirmed by the three-member Commission on Judicial Appointments despite a flurry of opposition, particularly from critics who balked because she had never been a judge and those who resented her solely because she was a woman.
While on the bench, Bird led a majority that bolstered environmental laws, strengthened consumer laws and broadened injured parties' right to sue.
"I think her opinions are going to stand the test of time," Brown said Sunday. "They are good opinions, they are well reasoned and will continue to have influence . . . people will refer back to them and see the wisdom."
Brown met Bird in a UC-Berkeley dormitory dining hall while she was attending Boalt Hall Law School.
"I knew then that she was a formidable woman," Brown said of the woman who later volunteered to chauffeur Brown to and from appearances and events during his gubernatorial campaign.
Bird's tenure was steeped in controversies from the start, from critical speeches about the judicial system to the many separate opinions she penned on various court rulings.
In one, Bird dissented from the court's ruling that upheld Proposition 13, the 1978 property tax initiative; she also wrote a decision banning ladies nights at nightclubs and bars, and she affirmed decisions supporting tenants' rights.
She also fiercely opposed the death penalty, arguing that it was disproportionally applied to blacks and other minorities.
Not willing to bend principles
"She knew who she was and what she believed in, and she was not willing to bend her principles to stay on the court, or be more popular or have more friends," said Tom Quinn, who served in Gov. Jerry Brown's cabinet alongside Bird, then Brown's secretary of agriculture.
San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown remembered Bird as an intellect who was as compassionate as she was contemplative.
"She was close to a genius in terms of her intellectual capacity," Willie Brown said.
"Her humanity literally wiped away all of that inherent logic that's required as a lawyer. She was a great chief justice and, except for her death penalty actions, she'd still probably be on the bench."
Gerald Uelmen, a Santa Clara University law professor, said Sunday that Bird's recall "taught a very chilling lesson to judges about how far they can stick their neck out."
Uelmen called Bird idealistic and principled but said, "If there's any lesson from the whole experience, it's the need to balance the idealism with some pragmatism."
In a similar vein, UC-Berkeley law professor Stephen Barnett said that Bird was "a dedicated, courageous, gifted judge who . . . failed to appreciate the limits of the judicial function on a court whose justices have to face the voters."
Role model for women in law
Nevertheless, she was a role model and inspiration to countless women. Drucilla Ramey, executive director of the Bar Association of San Francisco, called Bird an icon to thousands of women lawyers.
Chief Justice Ronald George said Bird was a trailblazer on the seven-member Supreme Court - one that now has three women among its seven members.
"As a jurist she was a strong and eloquent advocate for her views," George said.
The youngest of three children, Bird was born Nov. 2, 1936, on a chicken farm on the outskirts of Tucson.
Her father, a former hat supplies salesman who went bankrupt in the Depression, left and died shortly thereafter.
Her mother, Anne Bird, a teacher, took a job installing plexiglass windows on transport planes at David Monthan Air Force Base, then moved the family to New York, where she worked in a Long Island plastics factory.
Rose, with her brothers Jack and Philip, did the household chores and odd jobs to help out the struggling family financially.
One brother now lives in Hawaii, the other still lives in Arizona.
"We had our responsibilities when we were young, but I really appreciated it," Rose Bird told an interviewer. "I think it builds within children feelings of responsibility, not only for themselves but for others."
She was in the high school honor society in Sea Cliff, Long Island, an overwhelmingly Republican area, but she canvassed for Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson.
She won a full scholarship at Long Island University, where she majored in English and intended to become a journalist, something that amused reporters who later maintained relations with her that were chilly at best.
Graduated magna cum laude in 1958, she won a fellowship to UC-Berkeley but worked for a year as a secretary to earn money for living expenses.
At Berkeley, Bird won a Ford Foundation grant to serve as an intern in the Legislature. There, she worked for Assemblyman Gordon Whitten and helped draft legislation for a statewide testing program for students.
Switched her major to law
The experience led her to switch her major from political science to law, believing lawyers had more influence on public policy. She earned her law degree from Boalt Hall in 1965.
She became the Nevada Supreme Court's first woman law clerk; Justice David Zenoff pronounced her "intellectually marvelous."
In 1966 - a time when women lawyers were forbidden to wear slacks in the courtroom - Bird was rejected by two counties for a public defender's job because she was a woman.
She was hired as Santa Clara's first woman public defender but only after her future colleagues took a vote "to see if they wanted a woman to come in."
She got only two votes, from a black and a Latino, but was hired.
"It's a family of man out there - and women," Bird said later. "You've got to reach out your arms and tell people they're welcome. They're not going to go where they're not wanted."
Described by colleagues as a gifted appellate lawyer, she became chief of the appellate division and played key roles in several landmark cases before the Supreme Court she eventually was to head.
In the summer of 1974, Bird worked as a volunteer for Jerry Brown, acting as his chauffeur and intending to enter private practice that fall. But when Brown won the governorship, she joined his transition team.
When Brown named her secretary of Agriculture and Services, she was the first woman to hold a cabinet-level position in California history.
Controversy followed. Under her leadership, the Division of Occupational Safety and Health flourished, earning her favor from labor unions and workers but the dislike and distrust of business.
Banned short-handled hoe
Her department banned the use of the short-handled hoe, making her powerful enemies among big farm interests. She earned even more enmity there when she drafted the state's landmark farm labor bill allowing farm workers to organize.
She was president of the Hastings College of the Law board of directors when Gov. Brown nominated her as chief justice.
After her recall, Bird became even more of a recluse than she had been in public life, living quietly in a Palo Alto cottage with her mother until Anne Bird died in 1991, then living alone.
Uelmen, one of O.J. Simpson's attorneys, said she was hurt badly by the recall. "She kind of withdrew into a shell almost," he said of his longtime friend. "There was a time, in the year or two after the election, that she didn't respond to calls or answer letters.
Partly because of continuing threats on her life but mostly because she preferred it, she kept her address and phone number secret, put a "no admittance" sign on her gate, cut off friends and often refused to come to the door.
She tended her garden of roses and wisteria, wrote poetry, went to movies with her mother and stayed very private.
Drawing a $12,000 annual state pension - augmented by a $43,400-a-year judicial pension started in 1999 - the former chief justice avoided media interviews, suggesting that reporters explore issues of substance rather than dealing in gossip about her private life.
If she rejected society's company, it did hers as well. None of the prestigious faculty seats that come to retired justices materialized. She did teach for a couple of semesters at Golden Gate University School of Law in 1992-93, telling students to call her Justice Bird.
In a move somewhat typical of her quixotic nature, she then went to the East Palo Alto Community Law Project, but did mostly clerical work at first, not revealing her identity to fellow workers. Even after her cover was blown, she stuck mostly to support work.
Bird was not licensed to practice law then because, it has been reported, she couldn't afford the bar dues. She later got the State Bar to change its ethics rules to allow retired justices to do volunteer legal work.
Collaborated on law textbook
She also collaborated on a constitutional law textbook with the late University of Santa Clara Professor Russell W. Galloway Jr.
During Simpson's murder trial, she called defense lawyers to comment on strategy and later wrote an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times in which she said the prosecution failed to prove Simpson's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Few people even knew the extent of her illness, although she was witty as ever while she was being treated. She underwent a modified radical mastectomy in 1976 and a mastectomy in 1996.
Thorwaldson, spokesman for the medical center, remembered that she had told her doctor that she had no intention of dying until she got her garage cleaned up, "which would take at least 15 years."
Dr. Mary Hufty, Bird's primary physician at the Palo Alto Medical Clinic, said Bird was "a beloved patient of mine."
"We had done all we could do," she said.
Although she scaled heights formerly unachievable to women in California, and although she was one of the most powerful women in the state's history, in the end, the remarkable Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird seemed a rather tragic figure, dying almost forgotten and withdrawn from the society she sought to serve.
As former Gov. Brown sadly said two years ago about his friend: "People lose their fight. She's burnt."
Or as she herself put it in 1986, in the ashes of the voters' rejection of her beliefs and herself: "I have tried to do my best."