efore choosing to study law, Ronald George trained for a career as a diplomat. It's paid off. As chief justice, George has gone to Sacramento and secured important legislative victories for the court system, including stable trial court funding and a habeas corpus resource center aimed at supplying condemned inmates with appellate counsel.
George's diplomatic skills have also come into play in his jurisprudence. Remarkably, the affable Stanford Law School alum has sided with the majority in all but a couple of the 200-plus cases decided by the court under his tenure as chief. On especially thorny issues, George often holds the pivotal vote. Much like California's voters, George takes a hard line on criminal law issues, but is moderate -- some might even say liberal -- on the civil side.
George frequently takes the tiller on cases that require the court to venture into stormy political seas. He wrote American Academy of Pediatrics v. Lungren, 16 Cal.4th 307, the opinion that struck down a 1986 law requiring minors to obtain parental or judicial consent before getting an abortion. The decision got him in hot water with pro-life conservatives who oppose his confirmation. He also wrote for the court when it rejected a challenge to the Boy Scouts' policy of refusing membership to gays and atheists. Randall v. Boy Scouts of America, 17 Cal.4th 736; Curran v. Boy Scouts of America, 17 Cal.4th 670.
The Boy Scout opinions suggest an outer limit to George's social moderation. After all, just three years earlier, George wrote Warfield v. Peninsula Golf & Country Club, 10 Cal.4th 594, holding that the Unruh Civil Rights Act required a private country club to accept women as members. In the scouting cases, George drew a distinction between country clubs and scout troops based in part on the fact that many scout troops meet in private homes.
George became California's chief justice in May 1996 and has been a member of the state's highest court since September 1991. He enjoys a great deal of good will and respect throughout the judiciary for his work ethic and service for the California Judges Association and the state Judicial Council. He likes to point out that his judicial appointments have come from four different governors, including Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown.
George first gained notoriety by representing the California attorney general's office in the appeal of Sirhan Sirhan's murder conviction. He also made news on the L.A. Superior Court bench by denying then-DA John Van de Kamp's motion to dismiss charges against Angelo Buono, the "Hillside Strangler" who would ultimately be convicted of nine murders.
On criminal justice, George at first appeared to be perhaps the court's hardest-line law-and-order hawk. In his first five years on the court, he authored rulings broadening the admissibility of evidence in sex-crime cases and expanding warrantless searches for juvenile probationers and defendants freed on bail.
But as Chief, George signed off on the unanimous opinion that gave judges some leeway when considering what ought to constitute a strike under California's strict Three Strikes law. He has also voted with his colleagues to strike down a handful of death sentences. That doesn't mean George has gone soft; he enlarged the strike zone with this year's 4-3 majority opinion in People v. Benson, 18 Cal.4th 24, holding that two convictions that stem from the same criminal act can nonetheless be counted as two strikes.
