Ten years after Chief Justice Ronald M. George became head of California‘s courts and dramatically transformed the state’s judicial branch, many Los Angeles judges remain resentful of their loss of power and control.
Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, a Democrat, calls the Republican George "the best chief justice in California history." Some judges in Los Angeles have another name for him: "King George."
The resulting conflicts have ranged from whether Los Angeles is getting its fair share of judicial funding to who decides the color of the backings of legal briefs.
Under George, the California Legislature approved the transfer of courts from county to state control. The San Francisco-based Administrative Office of the Courts, a once obscure agency with few duties, has ballooned as it implements ambitious policies set by the Judicial Council, the courts’ policymaking body that George heads.
Since George became chief, the office has more than doubled its staff to 600, opened branches in Sacramento and Burbank and, according to some L.A. judges, created "opulent" offices with "plasma TVs."
The goal was to create a unified judicial branch with stable funding. But many Los Angeles judges, accustomed to calling the shots, chafe at having the purse strings shifted from the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, a short walk from the downtown courthouse, to San Francisco, where the Administrative Office takes up five floors in a state building and where L.A. is just one of 58 courts vying for attention.
From the start, George set out to make courts "user-friendly," declaring they were for the people, not the lawyers and judges.
"I have tried to create a strong and independent judicial branch that can resist pressure from the other two branches and have financial independence," said George.
When George became chief justice in 1996, he visited all of California‘s 58 counties. He observed rat-infested, overcrowded and crumbling courthouses, one so cramped that a broom closet sufficed as a judge’s chambers.
"The courts were going belly-up," George said.
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