The Mosk Seat

Does Stanley Mosk’s California Supreme Court seat naturally go to a Jew? In the political jockeying left by the death at 88 of California’s longest-serving justice, the debate begins again: Is there a special "Jewish seat" that deserves to be enshrined on the high court?

In filling the seat Mosk occupied for 37 years, here are some names being mentioned: former L.A. City Attorney Burt Pines and former Rep. Lynn Schenk, both close aides to Gov. Gray Davis; Arthur Gilbert, presiding justice of the Court of Appeal in Ventura (and a jazz pianist); Appellate Justice Norman Epstein and U.S. District Judge Nora Manella. Personally I’m for Pines (though I hear he eschews it). The Manella name has a certain poetic impact; her father’s firm, Irell & Manella, was among the early "Jewish firms" in Los Angeles, responding to discrimination against Jews among old-line law offices.

Political consultant Joe Cerrell, a close friend of Mosk, made the point to me that calling Mosk’s chair a "Jewish seat" makes sense for Davis’ re-election drive.

"Davis will want to know if there’s a loyalty factor among voters," said Cerrell, who has headed California campaigns since Hubert Humphrey.

This is a debate that goes back at least to Benjamin Cardozo on the U.S. Supreme Court. But these days, in the interethnic stew of American politics, the chunking of justice into ethnic bits is more problematic.

Davis, who addressed the crowd of some 300 jurists, legislators and lawyers at a memorial service for Mosk at Wilshire Boulevard Temple Tuesday, is being pressured from all sides. Among the Latino contenders are civil rights attorney Vilma Martinez and former Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera.

Should we be encouraging this kind of electoral bean-counting when it comes to the law? Should judicial candidates be little more than characters in Adam Sandler’s Chanukah song? Not to quibble with Cerrell, but on this "Jewish seat" business, I hope not.

Mosk’s tenure takes us way back, to the California of Gov. Culbert Olson in 1939, to whom he served as executive secretary and legal adviser; it was a time when the fact of being a Jew in public office really mattered. Olson, in one of his last acts as governor, named a 31-year-old Mosk to the Los Angeles County Superior Court. In 1958, Mosk was elected as California’s attorney general. As former Jewish Federation President Ed Sanders reminded mourners, Mosk’s candidacy for attorney general was historic, the first Jew on a California statewide ballot.

"Because of Stanley Mosk, Jewish candidates know that their religion is not a factor in elections in this great state," Sanders said.

But it’s what he did with his various offices, not how he got there, that ultimately proved historic. In the attorney general’s office, he created the first civil rights divisions, the first anti-trust divisions and the first consumer affairs divisions. We heard a lot on Tuesday about Tiger Woods, because in 1961 Mosk persuaded the PGA to admit black golfers. Only three weeks ago, Mosk appeared on CNN, as the PGA allowed disabled golfer Casey Martin to use a cart during tournaments.

"The innate bigotry fueling [PGA officials’] fears is the same bigotry that lay behind the Caucasian-only clause barring blacks from tour events until 1961," he said on June 5.

Appointed by Edmund G. "Pat" Brown to the high court in 1964, Mosk thought ahead about voting rights, employment rights and human rights. Years before the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Miranda vs. Arizona, Mosk affirmed the right of counsel for those accused of crimes. As the U.S. Supreme Court became more politically conservative, Mosk pushed the California court to adopt its own standards on individual rights. As Sanders said, he "resonated with issues" that meant justice for Californians.

Among them, he wrote decisions upholding the rights of disabled parents to maintain custody of their children, and allowing women injured by the anti-miscarriage drug DES to collect damages from the pharmaceutical industry.

Call it the pursuit of fairness, or a concern with what justice means to people. At the Wilshire Boulevard Temple service, Justice Vaino Spencer recounted, as if it were yesterday, her sense of awe in reading the 1947 headlines in the Los Angeles Sentinel that a Superior Court judge had knocked down so-called "restrictive covenants" prohibiting blacks from owning property in what had been white neighborhoods.

"Those of you who have never been affected by such discrimination cannot know the pain, the humiliation and stress they caused," Spencer said. "But courts had been approving these covenants for years." When Spencer finally met Mosk, she was impressed to find that while he personally had never experienced discrimination, "he felt deeply."

I met for a blintz breakfast with Mosk several years ago when he was running for re-election. This time, he feared it was his age, not his religion, that would be an issue. He won handily.

Mosk served Californians for one quarter of the state’s history. Let "the Mosk seat" — not the "Jewish seat" — go to the candidate most committed to civil liberties. Let’s do justice to the man.