Bird on Voters and the Court

In his article (Opinion, March 16), “Chief Justice Bird on Voters and the Court,” Times editorial writer Lee Dembart portrays California voters as “a lynch mob . . . gathered outside the jail, demanding that murderers be turned over for punishment,” . . . “clamoring for frontier justice,” while Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird “stands in the doorway, trying to tell the mob what the law and civilization demand.”

What I perceive is a different scenario entirely. I see the law-abiding people of our state begging for the end of the kind of supercilious arrogance displayed by Bird. In one interview after another Rose Bird reveals her contempt of the ordinary citizens, berating their lack of understanding of the role of a judge or the role of a court, even of the role of the Bill of Rights. Only Rose Bird understands these profound matters!

How many times have we heard from her that judges must be “independent”? Independent of what? Of common sense? Our fundamental laws are supposed to be based not only on common sense, but also on the common good. Any judge who excuses her (or his) decisions on the basis of “independence” alone, as Bird has done since the day she was appointed to office, has obviously lost “the common touch” and has placed herself (himself) on a level above those of us unable to understand that “it takes enormous maturity on the part of society to understand the role of a judge.”

When I cast my vote in November it will be based on my own independent, mature understanding of the thought processes of a judge who “has voted to overturn either the conviction or the sentence in all 56 death-penalty cases that have come before her,” and who fails to recognize her own version of what she calls “lock-step justice.”

HASKELL COLLIER

Whittier