{{Short description|American judge (1930–2025)}} {{More citations needed|date=April 2025}} {{Use mdy dates|date=July 2025}} {{Infobox officeholder | name = Joseph Raymond Grodin | image = Joseph_Grodin.jpg | alt = outdoor shot of a caucasian male with a full head of grey hair wearing a purple turtleneck sweater and jacket | office = Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court | constituency = | term_start = December 27, 1982 | term_end = January 5, 1987 | nominator = | appointer = Governor Jerry Brown | predecessor = Frank C. Newman | successor = David N. Eagleson | office1 = Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, First District, Division Two | constituency1 = | term_start1 = March 1982 | term_end1 = December 26, 1982 | nominator1 = | appointer1 = Governor Jerry Brown | predecessor1 = | successor1 = | office2 = Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, First District, Division One | constituency2 = | term_start2 = July 1979 | term_end2 = March 1982 | nominator2 = | appointer2 = Governor Jerry Brown | predecessor2 = ''New seat'' | successor2 = | birth_name = Joseph Raymond Grodin | birth_date = {{birth date|1930|8|30}} | birth_place = Oakland, California, U.S. | death_date = {{death date and age|2025|4|6|1930|8|30}} | death_place = Oakland, California<ref>https://jweekly.com/2025/04/22/joseph-grodin-labor-lawyer-who-served-on-states-high-court-dies-at-94/</ref> | party = Democratic | spouse = | alma_mater = University of California, Berkeley (BA)<BR>Yale Law School (LLB)<BR>London School of Economics (PhD) }}
'''Joseph Raymond Grodin''' (August 30, 1930 – April 6, 2025) was an American lawyer and law professor. He served as a Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal and an associate justice of the Supreme Court of California.<ref name="Hearn">Hearn, Lorie (October 27, 1986) Grodin appeals to voters to examine his opinions. ''The San Diego Union-Tribune''</ref> Grodin lost his Supreme Court seat in a contentious 1986 retention election that also removed Justice Cruz Reynoso and Chief Justice Rose Bird.
==Background== Grodin was born in Oakland, California on August 30, 1930.<ref name=bancroft>Joseph R. Grodin, [http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/roho/ucb/text/grodin_joseph.pdf “Professor of Law and California Supreme Court Justice Joseph R. Grodin” conducted by Leah McGarrigle], 2004, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2006.</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/107881192/the-san-francisco-examiner/|title=Profile: Joseph R. Grodin|work=San Francisco Examiner|date=January 5, 1986}}</ref> Grodin's father had emigrated from Vilkaviškis, Lithuania where his own father and grandfather had been rabbis.<ref name=bancroft/> The family owned a successful men's clothing store on Broadway known as Schwartz & Grodin.<ref name=bancroft/> Grodin went to Sunday school at Temple Sinai and graduated in 1948 from Piedmont High School, where he played fullback on the football team.<ref name=bancroft/> Three years later Grodin graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with honors.<ref name=quarterly>[http://www.hastingsconlawquarterly.org/archives/V16/I1/Zakheim.pdf ''Retrospect, Oral History: Justice Joseph R. Grodin''], 16 Hastings Const. L.Q. 7 (1988).</ref> While at Cal, Grodin was on the debate team with fellow future California Supreme Court Justice Allen Broussard.<ref name=quarterly/> Grodin enrolled in a Harvard Ph.D. program to pursue his interest in political economy but local labor lawyer and future Justice Mathew Tobriner encouraged him to go to law school first.<ref name=quarterly/>
In 1951, Grodin matriculated at Yale Law School, with future Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt, future Justice Ellen Ash Peters and future congressman Allard K. Lowenstein as classmates.<ref name=quarterly/> He studied contracts under Friedrich Kessler, civil procedure under Circuit Judge Charles Edward Clark, property under Myres S. McDougal, equity under Circuit Judge Jerome Frank, arbitration under Wesley Alba Sturges, future interests under Ashbel Green Gulliver, philosophy under F. S. C. Northrop and jurisprudence under Felix S. Cohen.<ref name=quarterly/> No other students enrolled in community property so the professor only met with him twice, once to tell him he could find books on the subject in the library, and next to tell him to write the exam questions then answer them.<ref name=quarterly/> During both summers Grodin returned to work in Tobriner's labor law practice.<ref name=quarterly/> Grodin graduated cum laude in 1954.<ref name=quarterly/>
Worried about Yale's lack of emphasis on black letter law, Grodin hired Bernard E. Witkin to tutor him for the California Bar Exam.<ref name=quarterly/> Grodin next received a Fulbright grant to study at the London School of Economics under Otto Kahn-Freund.<ref name=bancroft/> He would extend the grant to finish a Ph.D. so as to get a draft exemption from the Korean War.<ref name=quarterly/>
Grodin died on April 6, 2025, at the age of 94.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Former California Supreme Court Justice Joseph Grodin Dead at 95 |url=https://www.law.com/therecorder/2025/04/08/former-california-supreme-court-justice-joseph-grodin-dead-at-95/?slreturn=20250408193659 |access-date=April 8, 2025 |website=The Recorder |language=en}}</ref>
==Professional life==
===Legal practice=== Grodin returned to California in 1955 and joined Tobriner's law firm focusing on labor law.<ref name=quarterly/> His clients included union boss David Dubinsky.<ref name=quarterly/> In 1959, Grodin became a partner after both Tobriner and Leland Lazarus were appointed to the bench by Governor Pat Brown.<ref name=quarterly/> Grodin began teaching labor law part-time at University of California, Hastings College of Law.<ref name=bancroft/> Wanting to visit his close friend, future Justice Hans A. Linde, in 1970 Grodin took a year off from the firm to teach at the University of Oregon School of Law.<ref name=quarterly/> When Grodin returned to San Francisco he began teaching full-time at UC Hastings.<ref name=bancroft/><ref>{{cite journal|title=Hastings Community|journal=Hastings Alumni Publications|date=Fall 1992|volume=81|page=24|url=http://repository.uchastings.edu/alumni_mag/81|accessdate=August 23, 2017|publisher=Hastings College of the Law Alumni Association|location=San Francisco, CA}}</ref>
The California Agricultural Labor Relations Board had just been created after a hard fought campaign by Cesar Chavez and California Secretary of Agriculture Rose Bird.<ref name=bancroft/> Governor Jerry Brown, a Yale Law School graduate who clerked for Justice Tobriner, needed a Teamsters voice on the board so he appointed Grodin, serving alongside future Cardinal Roger Mahony.<ref name=bancroft/> Relations were contentious; the board was picketed by opposing sides at the same time and was shouted down in a Teamsters hall in Salinas, California.<ref name=bancroft/> When the legislature stopped paying board members, Grodin resigned.<ref name=bancroft/> Regardless, in July 1979 Governor Brown appointed Grodin to a newly created seat on Division One of the California Court of Appeal, First District.<ref name=quarterly/>
===Judicial service=== When Grodin displayed unfamiliarity with the California Penal Code at his first writ conference, Justice John Racanelli suggested he needed to "do a little homework."<ref name=quarterly/> Grodin was further humbled when he had to dissent in the first labor case he heard, despite citing a book he had written on the topic.<ref name=quarterly/> Governor Brown promoted Grodin to Presiding Justice on Division Two of the California Court of Appeal, First District, in March 1982. While in Sacramento, defense attorney Terence Hallinan convinced Grodin to give notorious farm worker serial killer Juan Corona a new trial. Affirming the judgment, the Supreme Court largely quoted from Grodin's opinion.<ref>[http://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/people-v-superior-court-corona-30620 ''People v. Superior Court (Corona)'', 636 P.2d 23, 30 Cal. 3d 193, 178 Cal. Rptr. 334 (1981).]</ref>
Governor Brown appointed Grodin to the California Supreme Court in December 1982.<ref name="Hearn"/> With Grodin, Governor Brown had appointed all but two of the court's justices. When Grodin and a bare majority of the court found the Federal Arbitration Act did not apply to California's franchising statute, he was reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court in ''Southland Corp. v. Keating'' (1982). On the court, Grodin compiled a solid liberal record, voting mostly with Chief Justice Rose Bird. He was considered supportive of trial lawyers and defense attorneys, while seeming skeptical of law enforcement and business interests. He opposed the death penalty.<ref>Zahn, Paula (March 29, 1990) JUDGE JOSEPH GRODIN, OPPONENT OF DEATH PENALTY . CBS News Transcripts</ref>
When the court abolished the death penalty in ''People v. Anderson'' (1972) the electorate restored it with California Proposition 17 (1972) and expanded it with California Proposition 7 (1978). While the court upheld Proposition 17, now Chief Justice Rose Bird and Justice Torbriner dissented.<ref>[http://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/people-v-frierson-23185 ''People v. Frierson'', 599 P.2d 587, 25 Cal. 3d 142, 158 Cal. Rptr. 281 (1979).]</ref> Nevertheless, Chief Justice Bird, a former public defender, voted to reverse every single one of the more than 60 death penalty cases she heard, usually joined by Justices Cruz Reynoso, Allen Broussard, and Grodin. She dissented from allowing a victims' rights amendment to the constitution, Proposition 8 (1982), to even appear on the ballot.<ref>[http://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/brosnahan-v-brown-30667 ''Brosnahan v. Brown'', 651 P.2d 274, 32 Cal. 3d 236, 186 Cal. Rptr. 30 (1982).]</ref> After it passed, Justice Grodin dissented in part along with Chief Justice Bird when a bare majority of the court upheld the proposition.<ref>[http://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/people-v-castro-23428 ''People v. Castro'', 696 P.2d 111, 38 Cal. 3d 301, 211 Cal. Rptr. 719 (1985).]</ref>
After the electorate exercised a 1982 veto referendum against what voters saw as Brown's gerrymandered redistricting plan, a bare majority of the court ordered the governor's plan to be used anyway.<ref>[http://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/assembly-v-deukmejian-30639 ''Assembly v. Deukmejian'', 639 P.2d 939, 30 Cal. 3d 638, 180 Cal. Rptr. 297 (1982).]</ref> Grodin joined the majority blocking voters' subsequent attempt to redistrict directly through a 1983 proposition, even as dissenting Justice Frank K. Richardson inveighed the court "slams the door to the polling place in the face of the people".<ref>[http://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/legislature-v-deukmejian-30700 ''Legislature v. Deukmejian'', 669 P.2d 17, 34 Cal. 3d 658, 194 Cal. Rptr. 781 (1983).]</ref> The court was attacked for these rulings as being partisan and overly political.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Blum|first=Bill|title=Toward a Radical Middle, Has a Great Court Become Mediocre?|journal=ABA Journal|date=January 1991|page=52|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=z7cN6H6oPw8C&q=otto+kaus&pg=PA52|accessdate=August 24, 2017}}</ref> Grodin joined the liberal majority when it granted the American Federation of Labor's 1984 original petition to block a balanced budget amendment proposition from appearing on the ballot.<ref>[http://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/american-federation-labor-v-eu-30746 ''American Federation of Labor v. Eu'', 686 P.2d 609, 36 Cal. 3d 687, 206 Cal. Rptr. 89] stay denied sub nom. [https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/468/1310 ''Uhler v. AFL-CIO'', 468 U.S. 1310 (1984)] (Rehnquist, J.) (state grounds predominates).</ref>
===Retention election=== California Supreme Court justices must be confirmed by the electorate at the first election for governor after their appointment. No incumbent had been defeated since Justice Frank G. Finlayson in 1926.<ref>Gerald F. Uelmen, [http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1814&context=lawreview ''Symposium, California Judicial Retention Elections''], 28 Santa Clara L. Rev. 333 (1988).</ref> Nevertheless, Chief Justice Rose Bird, Jerry Brown's Secretary of Agriculture and a former public defender, was only supported by 51.7% of voters in the 1978 general election, the same ballot that passed Proposition 7.
Newly elected California governor George Deukmejian, elected in 1982 and who as attorney general had voted to approve Grodin's appointment to the appeals and supreme court benches, supported a movement to remove the liberal justices from the Court, based largely on the rulings regarding redistricting, tax reform, and ballot propositions.<ref>[http://www.cschs.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/CSCHS_2007-Brown.pdf Patrick K. Brown, The Rise and Fall of Rose Bird: A career Killed by the Death Penalty, California Supreme Court Historical Society (2007).]</ref>
Capitalizing on moral panic over the crack epidemic and the public's intense dislike of Jerry Brown, Governor Deukmejian began a campaign to recall "Jerry's Justices" by labeling them soft on crime and overly political in their rulings. California prosecutors, noting that there had been zero executions since the electorate restored the death penalty, released a white paper attacking the justices as biased in favor of criminal defendants and trial lawyers. Commercial attorneys followed, releasing a paper accusing the court of being beholden to big labor.
Grodin had served as treasurer on Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaign and had himself made an unsuccessful run for the Berkeley City Council.<ref name=bancroft/> He raised money from labor unions and the California Trial Lawyers Association, and the state police union ran a TV ad endorsing Grodin.<ref name=quarterly/> Nevertheless, he was outspent by his opponents and suffered from a series of TV attack ads highlighting the victims in murder sentences he had overturned. Grodin was removed by the California electorate at his first retention election in 1986.<ref>EGELKO, BOB (November 5, 1986) "New Era for High Court Following Defeat of Three Justices", Associated Press.</ref> Grodin was supported by 43.4% of voters, while Justice Cruz Reynoso was supported by 39.8%, and Chief Justice Rose Bird was supported by 33.8%. Deukmejian, who had won a reelection rematch in a surprise 61% to 37% landslide, was now free to appoint a majority of the court.{{citation needed|date=December 2022}}
Grodin returned to being a law professor at UC Hastings and wrote extensively about the need to abolish judicial elections.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://libraryweb.uchastings.edu/library/bibliographies/faculty/Joseph-R.-Grodin/|title=Faculty Bibliographies- UC Hastings College of the Law Library}}</ref>
==Books== * ''California State Constitution: A Reference Guide (Reference Guides to the State Constitutions of the United States)''. Greenwood Press (1993); {{ISBN|978-0-313-27228-8}} * ''Collective Bargaining in Public Employment''. West Publishing (1993); {{ISBN|978-0-314-01862-5}} * ''Public Sector Employment: Cases and Materials''. West Group Publishing (2004); {{ISBN|978-0-314-26364-3}} * ''In Pursuit of Justice: Reflections of a State Supreme Court Justice''. University of California Press (1989); {{ISBN|978-0-520-06654-0}} * ''Silver Lake (High Sierra Hiking Guide, No 17)''. Wilderness Press (1983); {{ISBN|978-0-89997-027-1}}
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== * [http://www.uchastings.edu/academics/faculty/experts/index.php?expert=joseph.grodin Faculty page at UC Hastings] * [http://www.cschs.org/history/california-supreme-court-justices/joseph-r-grodin/ Joseph R. Grodin]. California Supreme Court Historical Society. * {{cite journal|last1=Werdegar|first1=Kathryn M.|title=A Tribute to Justice Joe Grodin|journal=California Legal History|year=2015|volume=10|pages=8–12|url=http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/calegh10&div=5&start_page=8&collection=journals&set_as_cursor=1&men_tab=srchresults|accessdate=August 21, 2017}} * [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8pz5b63/entire_text/ Joseph R. Grodin Papers MSS.1001]. California Judicial Center Library, Special Collections and Archives. Online Archive of California. * {{cite web|title=Past and Present Justices|url=http://www.courts.ca.gov/12523.htm|publisher=California State Courts|accessdate=July 10, 2017}} * {{cite web|title=List of Past and Present Justices|url=http://www.courts.ca.gov/2344.htm|publisher=California Court of Appeal, First District|accessdate=August 20, 2017}}
==See also== * List of justices of the Supreme Court of California
{{s-start}} {{s-legal}} {{succession box | before= Frank C. Newman| | title= Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California | years= 1982–1987 | after= David Eagleson}} {{succession box | before= | | title= Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, First District, Division Two | years= March–December 1982 | after= }} {{succession box | before= | | title= Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, First District, Division One | years= July 1979 – March 1982 | after= }} {{s-end}}
{{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grodin, Joseph}} Category:1930 births Category:2025 deaths Category:People from Piedmont, California Category:Lawyers from Oakland, California Category:20th-century California state court judges Category:20th-century American lawyers Category:American jurists Category:American people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent Category:Jewish American academics Category:Justices of the Supreme Court of California Category:Judges of the California Courts of Appeal Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:Yale Law School alumni Category:Alumni of the London School of Economics Category:University of California College of the Law, San Francisco faculty