The Honorable Janice Rogers Brown

Some FACTS from JCN:

--- Justice Brown is the first African American woman to serve as an associate justice on the California Supreme Court. She was reelected with 76 percent of the vote of the citizens of California, the highest vote of all justices on the ballot.

--- Justice Brown grew up the daughter of sharecroppers in segregated, rural Alabama. Brown spent her childhood listening to her grandmother's stories about NAACP lawyer Fred Gray, who defended Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks.

--- Justice Brown worked her way through California State University-Sacramento and UCLA law school. She was an untimely widow and pressed on with her legal career for a time as a single working mother, until she remarried.

--- She has devoted almost all of her legal career to public service.

--- The California Supreme Court's Chief Justice called on her to write the majority opinion more times in 2001 and 2002 than any other Justice on the court.

--- 12 of Justice Brown's judicial colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans, write: "We who have worked with her on a daily basis know her to be extremely intelligent, keenly analytical and very hard working. We know that she is a jurist who applies the law without favor, without bias and with an even hand." (Claire Cooper, "Coalition vows to fight nomination," Sacramento Bee, 10/21/03)

--- A bipartisan group of 16 California law professors praise Justice Brown's "commitment to individual freedom, even when rights are asserted by unpopular litigants." (Claire Cooper, "Coalition vows to fight nomination," Sacramento Bee, 10/21/03)

--- A San Francisco Chronicle editorial said of her: "It takes judges with a deep respect for the law, and a willingness to set aside their personal views when making decisions. It takes judges with fearlessness, with a sense of confidence that the 'right' outcome will not always be the most POPULAR. Californians have a chance to cast a vote for an independent judiciary on November 3 by retaining ... Supreme Court justices who ... have all demonstrated a commitment to sound decision making.... The judiciary's job is to make sure that laws are applied fairly. George, Chin, Mosk and Brown have approached this duty with diligence and integrity. They should be retained." (Editorial, "Vote for Independent Court," The San Francisco Chronicle, 9/27/98)