Dinner at Linda’s was participatory art: begin at 7, out the door by 10.
The performance was conducted by Linda with Howard serving has her well-trained concert master. The participants tuned up during the half-hour before entering the dining room. While Linda worked to sense and set the mood, the profoundly introverted Howard cooked alone in the kitchen and marshaled his energy for the next 2½ hours with people.
The Best Person in our class and Linda’s sister, Carol, were houseguests. To join them for their first dinner in Santa Barbara, Linda invited Raj, a young physician who had just completed two years in Africa, and our mysterious classmate, Steve.
Steve arrived first and was followed immediately by Raj, who was so eager to talk to Linda about something he had just heard on his car radio that it was unnecessary for Linda to initiate a conversation.
Raj had known Steve for years and was introduced to the other two guests. He acknowledged them perfunctorily as he was ready to explode with what he wanted to say to Linda.
Finally, he had a chance to say, “Linda, I just listened to a podcast about a judge in Northern California who is being recalled because he gave a young convicted rapist a lenient sentence. The judge acknowledged the leniency of the punishment and gave his reasons, which made sense even if you disagreed with them. There’s no claim that the judge is corrupt or incompetent. He made a legal call as he saw it. His opposition sounded exceedingly emotional, and I doubt that more than one or two of them attended any part of the proceedings or understood the details of the case (or how it compared to similar cases decided by this judge and other judges on the same court).
“Here’s my point and my question: If judges have to please the crowd to keep their jobs, what does it mean for a judge to follow the law? Why not make sentencing the subject of a reality TV show?”
Linda replied, “It’s a judge’s fate. The first woman on the California Supreme Court, Rose Bird, angered a lot of people because she voted against the imposition of the death penalty in the 60 or so cases that came before her.
“Periodically, California’s appellate court judges have to stand in a general election for an unopposed ‘retention vote.’ When it was Bird’s turn, she faced an organized and angry opposition with a lot of money for TV. One of their most effective commercials painted her as soft on rape. The case they were talking about was a routine exercise in statutory construction. Bird was part of the majority of a court that held an enhanced sentence for rape with great bodily injury could be imposed only where there was bodily injury in addition to the injuries caused by the act of rape. Bird wrote a concurring opinion saying that, as a judge, she had to be especially careful and reflective when making a decision in a case, like this one, where she was personally ‘repulsed’ by the crime.
“In the same opinion, she encouraged the Legislature to make the penalty for the crime committed in this case more severe. That was twisted into being pro-rapist. She had the distinction of being the first woman on the state Supreme Court, the court’s first chief justice, and the first woman to get thrown off the court by an angry electorate.”
Linda had trained Howard so well that, when he entered with a tray of hors d’oeuvres, the timing was perfect for setting up her next line.
Howard asked, “And when former Chief Justice Bird was asked by the press about how she was taking her defeat, she replied … ?”
“I’m taking it like a man,” Linda said, exactly on beat and with an affectionate smile directed toward Howard.
Linda continued, “No matter how long you’ve been on the bench, every judge should have his or her bag packed and enough savings to keep going for at least a year. You never know when you’ll draw a case where making what you believe to be the proper decision is going to cost you your job. It’s as simple as that. If keeping the job is what informs a judge’s decision, that judge doesn’t belong on the court. Well, not our court anyway — maybe the federal court where the appointments are for life.”
“Let’s go back to what it means to take it like a man,” Carol insisted.
Steve offered, “I think of Achilles, the greatest of the Greek warriors assembled at Troy. King Agamemnon took back a slave girl he had given to Achilles. Achilles may have been a great hero, but he was also a man with feelings — and those feelings had been hurt. He went to his tent to pout, and he wouldn’t come out. He wouldn’t accept Agamemnon’s apology or his money or the return of the girl or even an offer of marriage to his choice of one of Agamemnon’s surviving daughters. (I say surviving daughters because he had already murdered one of them, Iphigenia, as a sacrifice to bring up some wind to get his fleet to Troy. He was that kind of a guy.) Anyway, Achilles wouldn’t accept the pleas to get over it from his fellow heroes. This is the original notion of a fully realized man.”
Carol said, “I remember that, Steve. The Trojan War, and later the Iliad and the Odyssey, were the first two dates on that ‘3,000 years of history’ card you gave us.”
Steve exclaimed, “You remember! My life is nearly complete. What happened next?”
Carol said, “I still have the 3,000 years card in the top drawer of my dresser. I can almost visualize it, but not quite.”
Carol had had her chance, so the Best Person felt free to go next, “It’s 399, the Death of Socrates.”
Steve said to her, “I’m going to swoon. That’s the next year and event on the card. Do you know what happened next in the story of Achilles?”
“Hmm. I believe I do.” She knew how to milk a good line when it was offered.
Steve said, “What?”
She said, “You think that the pouting Achilles did next is what it means to ‘take it like a man’?”
Steve was in his element, “Perhaps not determinative, but surely instructive.”
“Well then, for the sake of instruction, while he was pouting in his tent the manly Achilles called his mom.”
This brought laughter from all, but Carol had been in competition with the Best Person since kindergarten, and she was annoyed that she didn’t remember the death of Socrates. She said, “You told us we would have better lives if we carried your card in our wallets, right?”
Steve said, “I never said that. It may be true, but not something high school students are going to hear from another student. Mr. Banks was the one who made the distinction between card carriers and noncarriers.”
Carol asked, “How many people are still carriers?”
As Steve said, “No one knows, but …” the Best Person found her purse and took her card from her wallet.
I suppose that was the moment the figurative fireworks went off for her and Steve.
That’s how the Best Person in my class left her big job in San Francisco and moved to safe, sweet, sleepy Santa Barbara.
In the next installment, the Best Person talks to Carol about a possible glitch with the meteoric rise she’s been enjoying at her San Francisco law firm.
— Brian Burke is a certified family law specialist practicing family law and mediation in Santa Barbara. A researcher and educator in the field of divorce and family conflicts, he also is the creator of the Legal Road Map™. Click here for more information, call 805.965.2888 or e-mail brian@burkefamilylaw.com. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.