Talk:Supreme Court of California

message: How is it that of all the current justices on the court, Kathryn Mickle Werdegar is the only one who doesn't have a Wikipedia article of her own? 24.6.66.193 (talk) 19:02, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The official biography is Associate Justice Kathryn M. Werdegar--Jbergquist (talk) 01:46, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kathryn Mickle Werdegar? 

message: While she was born in Indonesia, that country was, at the time, the Dutch East Indies, and the fact she speaks English with a Dutch accent (less than one percent of Indonesians speak Dutch as their primary language), combined with her characteristically Dutch appearance (as can be seen in the photo provided at this link:  http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/courts/supreme/justices/kennard.htm), it does not seem accurate to characterize her as "Asian," unless we are going to start calling South African Boers "Black."  Its also interesting to note that she was apparently born in a Japanese concentration camp on Java, and it was generally the Dutch colonials in Indonesia who were so interned.  I am not aware of the precise ethno-lineage of Justice Kennard, and so while I suppose its possible she may have some Indonesian ancestry (presumably on her mother's side, as per her surname), I think its reasonable to conclude that her characterization as "Asian" was simply a mistake innocently made by someone who noted the fact she was born in Indonesia. KevinOKeeffe (talk) 08:48, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If you had bothered to run a simple Google search, you would have noticed the numerous sources indicating that she is of Asian descent.  For example, Legal Pad, the Cal Law blog (Cal Law is the online site of the Recorder, a legal newspaper published by Incisive Media),  quotes a Recorder story in which Kennard noted that her house came with a covenant (long since invalid) which allowed only Caucasians to live there (and then she joked that she could have been the maid).  Also note the discussion of her ethnic background in the press release from USC when she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws in 2007. It would be highly unlikely for a university handing out honorary awards to mess up details such as "Kennard is the first Asian American and the second woman to serve on the state’s highest court."  If you run a search on Google Books, you'll notice that there are articles on Joyce Kennard in books such as Notable Chinese Americans, The Asian American Encyclopedia, and Who's Who Among Asian Americans.  --Coolcaesar (talk) 19:37, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Joyce L. Kennard Asian?

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thread_title: File:GoodwinLiu.jpg Nominated for Deletion

message: Currently, it reads that the court is "the highest of the courts of California." I found that to be unnecessarily awkward and changed it to "the highest court in California." I was reverted by  with the following edit summary: "no, every federal court is a 'higher' court 'in' California".
It is, of course, true that there are federal courts in California. However, none of them is "higher" than any state court, including trial courts. The two jurisdictions are separate. The only federal court higher than the California Supreme Court is the U.S. Supreme Court. (I won't go into the exceptions in which federal courts can compel California courts to take certain actions based on the federal constitution. I believe those are usually based on collateral judgments, not direct.)
We do want to be precise. Therefore, I suggest the following language: "the highest state court in California."--Bbb23 (talk) 14:49, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: It should be "court of California". Sorry, this is an ongoing issue to differentiate between courts "in" a state and courts "of" a state. Saying that the California Supreme Court is the highest court "in" the state is implying that its the highest court of all "jurisdictions" in the state. Federal courts are superior to state courts just like appeals courts are superior to trial courts. Saying that appeals courts are only superior in certain situations is wrong; they are always superior by reason that they can remove a case from an inferior court but not vice versa. Int21h (talk) 16:55, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Most important, my proposed language says the highest state court in California. I can't possibly see any objection to that. Second, your understanding of "superior" courts is wrong. A federal trial court does not grab a state court case because the federal court is superior. The defendant in the state court action removes the case to the federal court because it could have been brought in the federal court in the first instance. None of this has anything to do with superiority. The Ninth Circuit, for example, cannot overrule a state court, regardless of which level of state court it is. The Ninth Circuit can disagree with a state court just as a state court can disagree with the Ninth Circuit, but disagreement among courts is not uncommon. Anyway, I'm not going to beat this to death because it's not worth it. If you still object to my change and there is no consensus by others for my change, fine, but in my view the basis of your objection is flawed.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:16, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  First sentence 

message: I recently updated the chart of current justices to include a category noting when the justice's judicial term will expire. While this is pretty straightforward for all currently appointed justices, in the case of a future vacancy, it may provide a source of confusion for readers. As briefly discussed in the composition section, if a justice is appointed to fill a vacancy that arose in the midst of a judicial term, that justice must stand for retention during the next gubernatorial election to serve out the remainder, if any, of their predecessor's term. If retained, that justice must again stand for retention at the end of his predecessor's term after either four or eight years. 
This has led to confusion surrounding Justice Liu's tenure. Retired Justice Moreno was retained to a 12-year term in 2010, but left the bench in early 2011. His successor, Liu, prevailed in a retention election in 2014, but that will only carry him through to the end of Moreno's initial 12-year term, which expires in 2023. In this case, the question would be how to portray Liu's "term" from 2011 to when he was required to stand for retention in 2014. Listing 2023 would be confusing for readers who know he is standing for retention in 2014, while listing 2014 as the expiration of the judicial term is inaccurate.
One potential change would be to add a category for when the next retention election would be, though that would, in practice, be redundant for all sitting justices. Another thought would be to replace term expiration dates with retention election dates and make a note for when the election is to complete the remaining four or eight years of a predecessor's term. Other ideas? --Js489991 (talk) 17:57, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The issue only comes up when a justice is appointed to a retiring justice's unserved term.  (And justices are rarely removed via elections.)   Footnotes (in the "term" category) for the justices who will stand election before the end of their terms would suffice.  --Weazie (talk) 18:28, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Term Limits and Retention Elections 

message: Joshua Groban is not in Justices list yet. 2601:647:4200:D900:F199:4A48:D3FF:311B (talk) 00:50, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I just added him. I invite others to update. I do not know nor can I quickly find his date of birth or his term-end date. I used his article and the Commission on Judicial Nominees's Nomination Report for the other info. TJRC (talk) 01:40, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Joshua Groban