DJ profiles CJ

Today's DJ profile is Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero's biggest challenge: allocating time to 3 'all-consuming' roles -- Collegial Chief Justice hasn't been in the minority in any case in her 1st year

• At the center of the high court's bench, Guerrero has come a long way from her childhood as the daughter of Mexican immigrants who raised her and her sister in a modest home in the Imperial Valley where Spanish was her first language and a key family goal was education. There were "stacks and stacks of books" around the house. "We didn't have a lot of money," she has said, "but we didn't need for anything."
• The first in her family to finish high school, Guerrero graduated as a valedictorian, took prelaw courses at UC Berkeley and was accepted at 15 law schools, including Harvard. She chose Stanford Law School. There, a strong influence was constitutional law scholar Gerald Gunther, a teacher known as a mentor of judges -- including Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- and a biographer of his own legendary mentor, Learned Hand, for whom he'd clerked. Gunther, who died in 2002, also clerked for Chief Justice Earl Warren, who credited Gunther with having had a central role in drafting the landmark Brown v. Board of Education opinion.
• That glittering judicial lineage wasn't lost on Guerrero, who got her bar card in 1997. "I remember feeling very fortunate that I had the opportunity to be taught by someone who had such insights into the law, through his own experiences," she told Stanford Lawyer magazine. "There was some discussion at the time as to whether we were learning what we needed to learn for the bar exam. And I remember thinking, 'I wouldn't trade what we were learning and how we were learning for anything.' You can take a bar review course, but there's no substitute for what he was giving us in terms of an education."
• A judicial career of her own soon became a goal. "My aspiration to be a judge traces back to my early days as an attorney," Guerrero told the Daily Journal. She worked as an associate at Latham & Watkins LLP in San Diego starting in 1997 and became an equity partner in 2006. She served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District from 2002 to 2003.
• "I am honored to be the first member of the Latino community to hold the position of Chief Justice of California. I am here not only due to my hard work, but because of a commitment in California over many decades to building a pathway to the bench for a more diverse group of qualified candidates. We've made huge strides in California but there's more work to be done. I look forward to historic nominations like mine becoming routine."

The DJ also has LA County Bar announces 3 honorees for annual dinner -- recipients include are retired California Supreme Court Justice Carlos R. Moreno and 2d District Court of Appeal Division 4 Presiding Justice Brian S. Currey.

And the DJ has Post-conviction appellate specialist nominated for state public defender -- Galit Lipa has been with the Office of the State Public Defender since 2021, serving as executive director of the Indigent Defense Improvement Division. Prior to that, she was program director at the Public Welfare Foundation and a supervising attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia.