Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Monday, December 24, 2018

 

Page 3

 

Commission Confirms Groban As Supreme Court Justice

 

By a MetNews Staff Writer

 

The Commission on Judicial Appointments on Friday confirmed, by unanimous vote, Joshua P. Groban’s appointment to the California Supreme Court.

Also confirmed Friday were three appointees to this district’s Court of Appeal: Laurence D. Rubin, who was elevated from associate justice on Div. Eight to presiding justice of Div. Five, and two Los Angeles Superior Court judges, Brian S. Currey, who will sit in Div. Four, and John S. Wiley Jr., who succeeds Rubin in Div. Eight.

Gordon B. Burns, undersecretary at the California Environmental Protection Agency, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Tracie L. Brown, and Alameda Superior Court Judge Ioana Petrou were confirmed as justices of the First District Court of Appeal.

Groban, a senior advisor to Gov. Jerry Brown, is slated to be sworn in by the Brown on Jan. 3; he will begin hearing oral argument on Jan. 8, a day after Gavin Newsom takes office as governor.

The commission was made up of Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, Attorney General Xavier Becerra, and Court of Appeal Presiding Justice J. Anthony Kline of the First District’s Div. Two, the state’s senior presiding justice. It met in San Francisco.

Upon his swearing in, Groban will fill the seat left vacant by the retirement of Justice Kathryn M. Werdegar on Aug. 31, 2017.

No Judicial Experience

Like all three of Brown’s nominees to the high court, Groban has no experience on the bench, a fact which Kline referenced at Friday’s hearing.

“There are people in the judicial and legal community who don’t think it is healthy for a court to be dominated...by people who have never sat in the judicial trenches,” he said.

Groban, he related, had expressed a similar view to the presiding justice in the past, telling Kline that he thought Brown’s next appointee should be drawn from the judiciary.

(Two of Brown’s prior appointments were academics; Goodwin Liu, appointed in 2011, was dean of Berkeley School of Law prior to taking the bench; Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, appointed in 2014, was a professor at Stanford. Leondra Kruger, also named to the court by Brown in 2014, was at that time a deputy assistant attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel.)

Nevertheless, Kline indicated his belief that Groban would be a “good judge.”

Presiding Justice Arthur Gilbert of this district’s Court of Appeal, Div. Six, agreed. He testified in support of Groban, saying:

“He is so interested in seeking out views and he has such a warm connection with other people and a sympathy, a kind of understanding of human nature, that I think he’s going to be a superb justice despite not having been down in the trenches.”

Groban’s Career

Groban worked as a senior official in the Governor’s Office since 2011, and before that handled business lawsuits at private law firms.

His major role in Brown’s administration was advising the governor on judicial appointments. The governor appointed more than 450 judges based on his guidance.

He also advised the governor on high-profile legal issues, including the Trump Administration’s lawsuit against California over laws protecting immigrants in the United States illegally and the administration’s request to send National Guard troops to patrol the border, as well as working on appeals in cases involving the state.

Groban also the lead attorney for the state in settlement talks over working conditions for farm workers.

The panels for Court of Appeal justice confirmations consist of Cantil-Sakauye, Becerra, and the longest-serving presiding justice of the district to which the person has been appointed. For this district, the committee was joined by Gilbert, while Kline served that function for the First District.

Cantil-Sakauye swore in the justices as they were confirmed.

 

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