New Chief Justice for California

California soon may join the list of states whose Chief Justice is a woman.
Just days after we posted that women hold that position in 40% of the United States, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tapped state appellate judge Tani Cantil-Sakauye (right) to succeed Ronald George, who resigned from the Chief Justiceship effective right after the New Year. The nomination goes to a state judicial commission and then to voters, for approval on the November 2 ballot.
Pleased to report that Cantil Sakauye is a 1984 graduate of the University of California, Davis, School of Law, my home institution. As an alum she's contributed her time to the King Hall Outreach Program, an intensive 2-year law school preparation program aimed at undergraduates who will be the 1st in their families to earn a bachelor's degree or who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Cantil Sakauye practiced as a Deputy District Attorney in Sacramento, then worked for the Office of Governnor George Deukmejian. She began her career on the bench in 1990, serving 1st on the state trial courts and, since 2005, as an Associate Justice for the state's Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento.

Cantil-Sakauye would be the 2d woman to lead the state's highest court; the 1st, as we've posted, was Chief Justice Rose Bird. But as a Filipina-American, Cantil-Sakauye would become the state's 1st Asian American Chief Justice. Among the Associate Justices with whom she'd serve: Joyce L. Kennard, Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, and Carol A. Corrigan. Accordingly, the arrival of Cantil-Sakauye would make the Supreme Court of California (left), like that of 3 other states in the Union, a woman-majority bench.

On November 4, ...

... 2005, 25-year-old Afghan poet Nadia Anjuman died following a beating at her home in Herat, for which both her husband and mother were arrested. It was believed that her family was angered by the publication and popularity of her poetry, about love and beauty. "The United Nations condemned the killing" of Anjuman (left), the Associated Press reported, seeing in it a "symptom of continuing violence against Afghan women four years after the fall of the Taliban."
... 1986, voters ousted 3 Justices of the California Supreme Court in a recall campaign that targeted the Court's record of reversals in death penalty cases. The 3 were Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird (below) and Justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin. The latter 2 became law professors; as posted, it's been my privilege to serve on the same faculty as Cruz these last several years. Bird, the 1st woman ever to serve on the state's highest court, had marked her 50th birthday just 2 days earlier; days later, asked how she was taking the defeat, Bird quipped, "Just like a man." She did volunteer work after her ouster, and died in 1999 from breast cancer complications.