Ronald Marc George (born March 11, 1940) is an American jurist. He previously served as the 27th

Chief Justice of California The Supreme Court of California is the highest and final court of appeals in the courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sacra ...

from 1996 to 2011.

Governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...

Pete Wilson Peter Barton Wilson (born August 23, 1933) is an American attorney and politician who served as the 36th governor of California from 1991 to 1999. A member of the Republican Party, he also served as a United States senator from California bet ...

appointed George as an associate justice of the Supreme Court in 1991 and elevated George to Chief Justice in 1996.

Early life and education

George grew up in Beverly Hills, the son of a Hungarian immigrant mother and French immigrant father. George graduated from

Beverly Hills High School Beverly Hills High School (usually abbreviated as Beverly or as BHHS) is the only major public high school in Beverly Hills, California. The other public high school in Beverly Hills, Moreno High School, is a small alternative school located on B ...

in 1957. He earned an

A.B. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

in 1961 and J.D. from

Stanford Law School Stanford Law School (Stanford Law or SLS) is the law school of Stanford University, a private research university near Palo Alto, California. Established in 1893, it is regarded as one of the most prestigious law schools in the world. Stanford La ...

in 1964.

California Deputy Attorney General

After graduating Stanford, George served as a Deputy Attorney General of California from 1965–1972. As a Deputy Attorney General, he argued before the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

in ''

Chimel v. California ''Chimel v. California'', 395 U.S. 752 (1969), was a 1969 United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that police officers arresting a person at home could not search the entire home without a search warrant, but police may search t ...

'' (1969) and '' McGautha v. California'' (1970). In 1971, he represented California as an

amicus curiae An ''amicus curiae'' (; ) is an individual or organization who is not a party to a legal case, but who is permitted to assist a court by offering information, expertise, or insight that has a bearing on the issues in the case. The decision on ...

in support of the State of Illinois in '' Kirby v. Illinois''. In 1972, his final year as a Deputy Attorney General, George unsuccessfully argued in '' California v. Anderson''. He was successful in defending the conviction of

Sirhan Sirhan Sirhan Bishara Sirhan (; ar, سرحان بشارة سرحان ''Sirḥān Bišāra Sirḥān'', born March 19, 1944) is a Palestinian Jordanian man who was convicted for the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy, a United States Sena ...

for the

assassination of Robert F. Kennedy On June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan shortly after midnight at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles. He was pronounced dead at 1:44 a.m. PDT the following day. Kennedy was a senator from New York and a candidate ...

Judicial career

Los Angeles Municipal Court

Governor

Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...

appointed George as a Judge of the Los Angeles Municipal Court on April 20, 1972. George was elected to a full six-year term on November 2, 1976.

Los Angeles County Superior Court

Governor

Jerry Brown Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. (born April 7, 1938) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as the 34th and 39th governor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected Secretary of S ...

appointed him to the

Los Angeles County Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, with 9,861,224 residents estimated as of 2022. It is the ...

Superior Court In common law systems, a superior court is a court of general jurisdiction over civil and criminal legal cases. A superior court is "superior" in relation to a court with limited jurisdiction (see small claims court), which is restricted to civil ...

on December 23, 1977; George was elected to a full six-year term on November 7, 1978, and re-elected on November 6, 1984. As a Superior Court judge, George presided over the trial of

Hillside Strangler The Hillside Strangler, later the Hillside Stranglers, is the media epithet for one, later discovered to be two, American serial killers who terrorized Los Angeles, California, between October 1977 and February 1978, with the nicknames originating ...

Angelo Buono Angelo Anthony Buono Jr. (October 5, 1934 – September 21, 2002) was an American serial killer, kidnapper and rapist who, together with his adopted cousin Kenneth Bianchi, were known as the Hillside Stranglers. Buono and Bianchi were convicte ...

in 1981–83. In that trial, George made the extremely unusual decision to deny the

District Attorney In the United States, a district attorney (DA), county attorney, state's attorney, prosecuting attorney, commonwealth's attorney, or state attorney is the chief prosecutor and/or chief law enforcement officer representing a U.S. state in a l ...

's motion to dismiss all 10 counts of

murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person wit ...

. The prosecutors felt their evidence against Buono was so weak that it did not justify even an attempt to win at trial, and trial judges rarely second-guess such decisions. George reassigned the case to the

California Attorney General The attorney general of California is the state attorney general of the Government of California. The officer's duty is to ensure that "the laws of the state are uniformly and adequately enforced" (Constitution of California, Article V, Section ...

's office, and that office successfully convicted Buono on nine of the 10 counts. Thus, it was recognized that the judge, through his action to deny the earlier

motion to dismiss In United States law, a motion is a procedural device to bring a limited, contested issue before a court for decision. It is a request to the judge (or judges) to make a decision about the case. Motions may be made at any point in administrativ ...

, had ultimately prevented a

serial killer A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons,A * * * * with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three ...

from going free. Oddly, Los Angeles County District Attorney

John Van de Kamp John Kalar Van de Kamp (February 7, 1936 – March 14, 2017) was an American politician and lawyer who served as Los Angeles County District Attorney from 1975 until 1981, and then as the 28th Attorney General of California from 1983 until 1991. ...

had been elected California Attorney General during the lengthy trial, so he led both the office trying to dismiss the charges and the office that successfully won conviction. George also presided over the trial of Marvin Gay Sr. for the slaying of Gay's son, the singer

Marvin Gaye Marvin Pentz Gay Jr., who also spelled his surname as Gaye (April 2, 1939 – April 1, 1984), was an American singer and songwriter. He helped to shape the sound of Motown in the 1960s, first as an in-house session player and later as a solo ar ...

California Court of Appeal

Governor

George Deukmejian Courken George Deukmejian Jr. (; June 6, 1928 – May 8, 2018) was an American politician who served as the 35th governor of California from 1983 to 1991. Of Armenian descent, Deukmejian was a member of the Republican Party and he also serve ...

appointed him to the California Second District Court of Appeal on July 23, 1987. George was confirmed and sworn in on August 27, 1987, and was elected to a full twelve-year term on November 6, 1990.

Supreme Court of California

Governor

appointed George as an associate justice of the

California Supreme Court The Supreme Court of California is the highest and final court of appeals in the courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sacra ...

on July 29, 1991, and he was sworn in on September 3. California voters elected him to a full twelve-year term on November 8, 1994. Wilson appointed George as the 27th

on March 28, 1996. George was confirmed and sworn into office on May 1, 1996. He was elected to a full twelve-year term on November 3, 1998, with 75.5% percent of the vote.

''In re Marriage Cases''

In 2008, Chief Justice George authored the opinion in the Supreme Court's 4–3 ruling in ''

In re Marriage Cases ''In re Marriage Cases'', 43 Cal. 4th 757 (Cal. 2008) was a California Supreme Court case where the court held that laws treating classes of persons differently based on sexual orientation should be subject to strict judicial scrutiny, and that ...

'' legalizing

same-sex marriage in California Same-sex marriage in California has been legal since June 28, 2013. The U.S. state first issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples on June 16, 2008 as a result of the Supreme Court of California finding in the case of ''In re Marriage Cases ...

. Citing the court's 1948 decision legalizing

interracial marriage Interracial marriage is a marriage involving spouses who belong to different races or racialized ethnicities. In the past, such marriages were outlawed in the United States, Nazi Germany and apartheid-era South Africa as miscegenation. In 19 ...

s, George's opinion found that sexual orientation is a protected class like race and gender, meaning that attempts to ban same-sex marriage would be subject to

strict scrutiny In U.S. constitutional law, when a law infringes upon a fundamental constitutional right, the court may apply the strict scrutiny standard. Strict scrutiny holds the challenged law as presumptively invalid unless the government can demonstrate th ...

under the

Equal Protection Clause The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "''nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal ...

of the

California Constitution The Constitution of California ( es, Constitución de California) is the primary organizing law for the U.S. state of California, describing the duties, powers, structures and functions of the government of California. California's original co ...

. It was the first state high court in the country to do so. Voters would overturn the decision less than six months later by passing Proposition 8 in the November 2008 elections. However, Proposition 8 would itself be later overturned by a federal court in ''

Perry v. Schwarzenegger Perry, also known as pear cider, is an alcoholic beverage made from fermented pears, traditionally the perry pear. It has been common for centuries in England, particularly in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and Worcestershire. It is also mad ...

''.

Potential Supreme Court nominee

George was occasionally floated as a candidate for justice of the

as a conservative acceptable to Democrats, such as when Democratic

United States Senator The United States Senate is the Upper house, upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives being the Lower house, lower chamber. Together they compose the national Bica ...

Barbara Boxer Barbara Sue Boxer (née Levy; born November 11, 1940) is an American politician and lobbyist who served in the United States Senate, representing California from 1993 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the U.S. ...

suggested George as a potential nominee for the seat on the Court vacated by

Sandra Day O'Connor Sandra Day O'Connor (born March 26, 1930) is an American retired attorney and politician who served as the first female associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. She was both the first woman nominated and th ...

's retirement. Boxer described both George and his fellow California Supreme Court Justice

Kathryn Werdegar } Kathryn Jocelyn Mickle Werdegar (born April 5, 1936) is a former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California, serving from June 3, 1994, to August 31, 2017. Biography Werdegar earned her B.A. with honors at the University of California ...

, as Republicans who "reflect the spirit of Sandra Day O'Connor's tenureindependent and nonideological."

Retirement

On July 14, 2010, Chief Justice George announced he would not seek to be re-elected in 2010 and would therefore retire at the end of his term: January 2, 2011. He was succeeded by

Tani Cantil-Sakauye Tani Gorre Cantil-Sakauye ( née Cantil; born October 19, 1959) is an American lawyer and jurist who was the 28th Chief Justice of California and is the president/ CEO of the Public Policy Institute of California. Nominated by Governor Arnold Sch ...

. In 2013, after his retirement, he published a book of memoirs, ''Chief: The Quest for Justice in California'', about his term on the Supreme Court.

Personal life

On January 30, 1966, George married Barbara J. Schneiderman in Los Angeles. They have three sons: Eric, Andrew, Christopher as well as three grandchildren, Charlotte, Maya, and Kohl.

References

Videos

External links

Official Biography from the State of California

Opinions authored by Ronald M. George
Courtlistener.com.

California Court of Appeal, Second District.

California State Courts. Retrieved July 19, 2017. {{DEFAULTSORT:George, Ronald Marc. 1940 births Living people Princeton University alumni Stanford Law School alumni Chief Justices of California Justices of the Supreme Court of California Superior court judges in the United States Judges of the California Courts of Appeal People from Beverly Hills, California Lawyers from Los Angeles California Republicans 20th-century American judges

Early life and education

California Deputy Attorney General

Judicial career

Los Angeles Municipal Court

Los Angeles County Superior Court

California Court of Appeal

Supreme Court of California

''In re Marriage Cases''

Potential Supreme Court nominee

Retirement

Personal life

See also

References

Videos

External links