Chief justice nominee earns top rating

Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, nominated by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to become California’s next chief justice, received the highest rating possible Monday from a state bar evaluations committee.

The Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation rated Cantil-Sakauye, 50, a Republican, as “exceptionally well qualified” and declared that she has a “brilliant mind” and shows “exceptional objectivity.”

“She is an extraordinarily hard worker,” the panel said. “She takes her duties very seriously, but also brings a sense of joyful enthusiasm to the performance of them.”

Cantil-Sakauye, the first nonwhite and only the second woman to be nominated as chief justice, is a former prosecutor and trial judge who also worked in the George Deukmejian administration. She now serves on the state Court of Appeal in Sacramento.

She is expected to be confirmed Wednesday by the three-member Commission on Judicial Appointments, which is headed by Chief Justice Ronald M. George and includes Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown and Court of Appeals Justice Joan Dempsey Klein, the state’s senior presiding justice. Cantil-Sakauye’s name would then appear unopposed for confirmation on the November ballot.

The little-known judge was a surprise nominee to succeed George, who decided unexpectedly in July to retire next year and who is believed to have recommended Cantil-Sakauye. George appointed her to the Judicial Council, the policy-making arm of the court system, which the chief justice heads.

Two speakers have signed up to oppose her nomination. E.T. Snell, a political activist from San Bernardino County, complained in a letter that Cantil-Sakauye has upheld stiff criminal sentences under the three-strikes law for relatively minor crimes.

The other opponent, Geoffrey L. Graybill, a Sacramento lawyer, charged she was “sexist,” “very zealous in her gender-biased view of heterosexual domestic violence” and has shown a “vengeful hypersensitivity to her gender identification.”

Attorneys and judges are scheduled to speak in favor of her nomination.

As a Sacramento County Superior Court judge, Cantil-Sakauye presided over the county’s first domestic violence court and later received an award for her work there.

She said in a recent interview that she was moved to take the post in part because of a “very traumatic” event involving her court reporter, whose husband one morning shot and killed their two children before turning the gun on himself.

The woman called the judge from the police department after the killings and lived in Cantil-Sakauye’s home for two weeks until family members helped move her out of the area.

Cantil-Sakauye said she had not realized that her court reporter was having trouble at home.

“I had no idea,” she said. “Everything always seemed so fine. I knew her children. Her children had been to my home.”

Cantil-Sakauye is the youngest of four children who grew up in a modest home in Sacramento. Her mother is a former crop picker who later became an executive secretary in state government. Her father, who had worked in the sugarcane fields in Hawaii, was an airplane mechanic.

The judge and the governor have both emphasized her humble origins, though her elder sister in an e-mail to The Times objected to the description of their parents’ background as “humble.”

Asked in the interview about her sister’s concern, Cantil-Sakauye opened her eyes wide in astonishment.

“Oh, my sister!” she said, then paused and grinned. “Do you have an older sister?”

She said her mother was proud of her field work and noted that her husband’s family had been interned with other Japanese Americans during World War II.

Cantil-Sakauye, the first Filipina named to serve on the state high court, received her law degree from UC Davis. She is married to a lieutenant in the Sacramento Police Department, and they have two daughters.

maura.dolan@latimes.com