Overview There are two takeaways from this year’s general election results for the contests involving Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, and Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao. Combined with the recall of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, these contests are a clear voter rejection of sentencing reform and progressive prosecutors. And obvious flaws in recent changes to recall laws at the state and local level are now causing headaches for local officials struggling to apply the tangled new procedures to these contests. The results show that attempts by elected officials to discourage recalls failed,...

 Overview This article is not about Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero. Nor is it about Associate Justice Patricia Guerrero of the California Supreme Court. Instead, it is about the Justice Patricia Guerrero who sat on the Court of Appeal, Fourth District, Division One from December 2017 to March 2022. For this article we analyzed all merits decisions that Justice Guerrero participated in and looked for trends. We found nothing unusual. Instead, we learned that Justice Guerrero was a typical modern California appellate justice: her opinions had a high unanimity rate, she often voted with her colleagues, and she reversed consistently with...

Our friends at the Brennan Center’s State Court Report have published a collection of advice for law students from eight sitting and former state supreme court justices. Read it here. The headliner is California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu. Perhaps the best is this pithy reflection by Arizona Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick: “I would have advised myself to get better grades.” Sage advice for those of us who weren’t the smartest bears in the room back then, if only we knew. Subscribe to the State Court Report newsletter here — it’s a great resource for anyone interested in state...