23 Facts About Rose Bird

Rose Elizabeth Bird was the 25th Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court.

Rose Bird was the first female clerk of the Nevada Supreme Court, the first female deputy public defender in Santa Clara County, the first woman to serve in the California State Cabinet, and the first female Chief Justice of California.

Rose Bird was notable as the first, and to date only, Chief Justice in California history to lose a retention election.

Rose Bird's father deserted the family and died when she was five.

Rose Bird's mother moved the family to New York City, where Bird and her brothers grew up in poverty.

Rose Bird later graduated from the UC Berkeley School of Law in 1965.

Rose Bird taught at Stanford Law School from 1972 to 1974.

Rose Bird volunteered with Jerry Brown's 1974 campaign for governor, and became a trusted advisor.

Rose Bird drew opposition due to her strongly liberal views, lack of judicial experience, and temperament.

Rose Bird was controversial among the Associate Justices on her own court.

Mosk claims Rose Bird required the Associate Justices to make appointments to talk to her for any reason.

Rose Bird's consistent opposition to the death penalty was a particular sore point for her critics.

Rose Bird reviewed a total of 65 capital cases appealed to the court.

Rose Bird was joined by at least three of the seven members of the court in 61 of those cases.

In 1981, Rose Bird ruled that the State Constitution required that the state provide free abortions for poor women.

In 1982, Rose Bird argued in dissent that the proposed California Proposition 8, known as the Victims' Bill of Rights, should not be allowed on the ballot.

Rose Bird was first subject to a retention election in 1978.

The anti-Rose Bird campaign ran television commercials featuring the surviving families of murder victims, whose murderers' sentences Rose Bird and her fellow Justices Cruz Reynoso, Joseph Grodin, and Allen Broussard had voted to reverse.

Rose Bird was pilloried because she generally voted to find some defect in death penalty convictions and to reverse them.

Rose Bird died on December 4,1999, at Stanford University Medical Center from complications of breast cancer, which she had fought on and off since 1976.

Rose Bird was the first and remains the only Chief Justice to be removed from that office by a majority of the state's voters.

In 1984, Rose Bird appeared as a family court judge in an episode of the television series Pryor's Place.

In 1987, Rose Bird appeared as a judge on the scripted television program called Superior Court.