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.

¡Felicitaciones, Cruz!

Heartfelt congratulations to my colleague, Cruz Reynoso, recipient of the American Bar Association's 2007 Robert J. Kutak Award, in recognition of his life's work as a lawyer, judge, and professor.
Those who spoke at yesterday's ceremony in San Francisco sketched an outline of Cruz's life: Growing up as 1 of 11 children in then-rural Orange County, California, where, as a child of Latino heritage, he attended segregated public schools. Rejecting those who said he was foolish to think he might one day go to college. Earning a bachelor's from Pomona College and a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Hanging out a shingle in El Centro. Becoming director of the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, and then a law professor at the University of New Mexico. Returning to California to join the bench. Eventually serving, from 1982-1987, as an Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court, the Latino to hold that position. Vice Chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, U.S. delegate to the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton in 2000 (above).
It's a truncated list of achievements, and yet it does not include what I've found most significant in the 6 years that Cruz, just retired this year as a chaired law professor at University of California-Davis, has been my colleague. He's a gentleman, in the best sense of the word -- a person of understatement and empathy, a mentor to his students, a friend to his colleagues. ¡Felicitaciones, Cruz, y muchisimas gracias!