Rubin Being Vetted for Presiding Justice

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

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Rubin Being Vetted for Presiding Justice

By STEVEN M. ELLIS, Staff Writer

Court of Appeal Justice Laurence D. Rubin of this district’s Div. Eight is being vetted for presiding justice of that division, the MetNews has learned.

Rubin, 62, declined to confirm or deny whether his name has been forwarded to the State Bar Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation, but questionnaires requesting an evaluation of the justice have reportedly been sent out. Presiding Justice Candace Cooper, the division’s first presiding justice, stepped down at the end of December.

The division was created in 2000, and its first justices—Cooper, Rubin, and the now-deceased Paul Boland—were confirmed the following year. Cooper had previously sat in Div. Two.

Both the JNE Commission and an independent committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association send out questionnaires once the governor has forwarded a name, in confidence, to the commission.

Rubin was born and reared in the Los Angeles area, and has spent eight of his 27 years on the bench as a justice in Div. Eight. In 2001, he was the first justice confirmed to the then-new division.

Admitted to the State Bar in 1972 after attending college and law school at UCLA, Rubin began his legal career as a law clerk to the late California Supreme Court Justice Stanley Mosk.

He joined the law firm of Kaplan, Livingston, Goodwin, Berkowitz & Selvin as an associate in 1973, becoming a partner five years later, and then joined Mitchell, Silberberg & Knupp in 1982 as of counsel.

Five months later, then Gov. Jerry Brown tapped Rubin for a spot on the Santa Monica Municipal Court, and Rubin became a Los Angeles Superior Court judge in 2000 upon the courts’ unification.

While a municipal court, and then Superior Court, judge, Rubin served on assignment to the Court of Appeal in 1985, 1992, 1995 to 1996, and 2000.

In 2001, then-Gov. Gray Davis appointed him to a seat on Div. Eight.

Rubin was a member of the Executive Board of the California Judges Association from 1994 to 1997, serving as vice president in his final year, and also chaired the association’s Committee on Judicial Ethics from 1993 to 1994.

He served three years on the Board of Directors of the California Judges Foundation beginning in 1999, and was a member of the Judicial Council of California’s Trial Court Coordination Advisory Committee from 1993 to 2000, and its State Constitutional Amendment 4 Working Group from 1997 to 1999.

Rubin has taught courses on judicial ethics and technology for the California Center for Judicial Education and Research since 1992, and has served as a judge for the UCLA School of Law’s Trial Advocacy Program since 1984.

He chaired the LACBA’s Dispute Resolution Committee from 1985 to 1987, and was a member of the Board of Governors of the Beverly Hills Bar Association from 1980 to 1981 and 1996 to 1997, and Barristers president from 1980 to 1981. Rubin was also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Santa Monica Bar Association from 1992 to 1994.

In 1995, Rubin served as president of the UCLA Law Alumni Association, and he was a member of the County Supervisors Association of California’s Committee on Jail and Prison Population in 1990.

The justice served as a field volunteer with the California Special Olympics from 1986 to 1993, and was honored with the UCLA Alumni Association’s Academic Achievement Award in 1971; the Santa Monica/Ocean Park Masonic Community Service Award in 1987; and the LACBA’s Emil Gumpert Award in 1992 for being an outstanding jurist in the field of alternative dispute resolution.