Chief justice expects chattier California Supreme Court

Should Leondra Kruger, Gov. Jerry Brown’s latest nominee to the California Supreme Court, be confirmed this month, she will be the fourth new justice on the seven-member bench in four years.

The turnover is propelling a change in culture on the court, according to Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye – especially as Brown has appointed three members in a row who have no previous judicial experience.

“We are a mix of boots-on-the-ground folks and people who have worked with the theories of the laws and the rule of law academically,” Cantil-Sakauye, who joined the court in 2011, said during a press gathering at her San Francisco office on Tuesday. “We will have a very healthy debate. We will instruct and bring each other along.”

Brown’s previous nominees, Goodwin Liu and Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, were both professors, while Kruger is a lawyer at the U.S. Department of Justice. Cantil-Sakauye said it’s a different approach that will likely result in “more active and longer conferences.”

“I expect that this new blood will have more discussions, but I think that’s healthy for us,” she said.

Though she had not heard of Kruger before the nomination, Cantil-Sakauye added, “All experience is welcome on the Supreme Court.”

In August, Cantil-Sakauye raised eyebrows when she was the lone vote against removing an advisory ballot measure about campaign finance law from last month’s ballot.

While her colleagues supporting kicking then-Proposition 49 off the ballot because of its non-binding nature, Cantil-Sakauye argued that its legality should be decided after voters had a chance to weigh in on it.

It turns out the precedent she cited, a 2005 case in which the Supreme Court allowed a challenged initiative to continue forward with a vote, has a personal connection: “It was me who was reversed by this court when I took something off the ballot,” she said. “This is rule of law to me.”

This story was originally published December 10, 2014 at 1:15 PM.