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Janice Rogers Brown

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Janice Rogers Brown (born in Greenville, Alabama, May 11, 1949) is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She previously was an Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court, holding that post since May 2, 1996. She is noted for her libertarian political beliefs.

U.S. President George W. Bush nominated her to her current position in 2003. However, her nomination was stalled in the U.S. Senate for almost two years due to Democratic opposition to her conservative judicial philosophy. She began serving as an appellate court judge on June 8, 2005. She is frequently mentioned as a possible Bush nominee to the United States Supreme Court. If Brown were appointed to the Supreme Court, she would become the first African-American woman Justice.

Family and education

She was born Janice Olivia Allen in Greenville, Ala., in 1949, five years before the Supreme Court struck down public school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education. After returning from service in World War II, her father grew cotton, corn and peanuts on a 158-acre (0.6 km²) plot he leased about 25 miles (40 km) away from Greenville, before reenlisting in the military, said Havard Richburg, a friend of the family. Her parents separated, and she was raised primarily by her grandmother, Beulah Allen, until her teenage years, when her mother, a nurse, took her to Sacramento, California. (Her mother remarried, adding the name Rogers.) Her family was involved in the voting rights movement in Alabama and became liberal Democrats. She was inspired to become a lawyer by the career of Fred D. Gray, the Alabama civil rights lawyer who represented Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. Brown has said she initially shared her family's views, but over the years became more conservative in her thinking. In California, she made her way through Sacramento State University in part by working at the Department of Corrections, where she met her first husband, Alan Brown, an administrator there. Soon after the birth of their son, Mr. Brown died of cancer, leaving her to finish college and then law school at the University of California, Los Angeles as a single working mother.

Source: New York Times

She earned her B.A. from CSU Sacramento in 1974 and her Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from the UCLA School of Law in 1977. In addition, she received a LL.M. degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2004.

Early law career

For most of the first two decades of her career, Brown worked for government agencies. She was Deputy Legislative Counsel for the Office of Legislative Counsel in California from 1977 to 1979. She then spent eight years as Deputy Attorney General for the Criminal and Civil Divisions of the California Attorney General's Office. She was Deputy Secretary and General Counsel for California's Business, Transportation, and Housing Authority from 1987 to 1989 (and a University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law Adjunct Professor from 1988 to 1989).

She briefly entered private practice as an Associate of Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Mueler & Naylor from 1990 to January 1991, when she returned to government as Legal Affairs Secretary for Governor Pete Wilson from January 1991 to November 1994. The job included diverse duties, ranging from analysis of administration policy, court decisions, and pending legislation to advice on clemency and extradition questions. The Legal Affairs Office monitored all significant state litigation and had general responsibility for supervising departmental counsel and acting as legal liaison between the Governor's office and executive departments. [1] In November of 1994, Wilson appointed Brown to the California Court of Appeals, Third Appellate District.

California Supreme Court Associate Justice

In May of 1996, Governor Pete Wilson appointed Brown as Associate Justice to the California Supreme Court. At that time, she was rated "not qualified" by the State Bar of California's Commission on Judicial Nominees, which evaluates nominees to the California courts, the first appointee to receive such a rating. The basis of that negative rating, according to the Bar, was her lack of judicial experience. Brown had then been sitting as a Justice on the Third District Court of Appeal of California (an intermediate appellate court below the California Supreme Court) for less than two years. Brown was praised in the JNE Commission evaluation for her intelligence and accomplishments, however.

While on the California Supreme Court, she wrote the majority opinion upholding an amendment to the California Constitution prohibiting affirmative action for women and minorities and dissented from an opinion striking down a parental consent law for abortions.

There were times, however, during her tenure on the California Supreme Court that Brown demonstrated purportedly liberal positions on criminal sentencing, freedom of speech and gun control. She was the lone justice to contend that a provision in the California Constitution requires drug offenders be given treatment instead of jail time. In 2000, she authored the opinion in Kasler v. Lockyer, upholding the right of the State of California to ban assault weapons, and of the Attorney General of California to add to the list of prohibited weapons. Her opinion in that case clearly explained that the decision was not an endorsement of the policy, but rather recognition of the power of the state.

Her reputation for libertarian political beliefs can be attributed to a speech she delivered to the Federalist Society chapter at University of Chicago Law School in 2000.

United States Court of Appeals Judge

She was nominated by President Bush on July 25, 2003 to be a United States Court of Appeals judge. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on her nomination on October 22 of that same year. After her name had passed out of committee and had been sent to the full Senate, there was a failed cloture vote on November 14, 2003. Bush renominated her on February 1, 2005.

On April 21, the Senate Judiciary Committee again endorsed Brown and referred her name to the full Senate once more. On May 23, Senator John McCain announced an agreement between several moderate Republican and Democrat U.S. Senators, the Gang of 14, to ensure an up-or-down vote on Brown.

On June 8, Brown was confirmed as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by a 56-43 Senate vote. She received her commission on June 10. Although no official announcement of her swearing-in ceremony was made, she began hearing federal cases on September 8 [2].

In 2005, she was considered a candidate to replace Sandra Day O'Connor as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, but John Roberts was chosen instead. Later, after the death of William Rehnquist and a change in Roberts' nomination to replace Rehnquist, O'Connor's position again became available. However, White House counsel Harriet Miers was nominated on October 3.

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