Ronald M. George

Chief Justice Ronald George was fond of saying, “Court reform is not for the short-winded.” A committed runner at the time he became Chief Justice in 1996, George persevered in securing stable funding for the trial courts, presiding over the successful merger of the municipal and superior courts, and pushing for jury duty reforms to make jury service less burdensome and more understandable to the citizenry.

During Chief Justice George’s tenure, the state judicial branch took over responsibility for managing courthouses from the counties, added more trial court and appellate judges, and allocated additional funding for court technology, court interpreters, and court-based programs for families and children.

Pragmatic, “affable, and seemingly inexhaustible,” as veteran legal affairs writer Bob Egelko put it in California Courts Review, George may be “in the same league as renowned Chief Justice Phil S. Gibson,” California’s first great judicial branch administrator. In its review of his first 10 years as Chief Justice, The Recorder newspaper concluded, “If he resigned today, . . . the native Los Angeleno would go down in history as an astute administrator who reshaped the state’s judicial system and its facilities, and as a savvy politician who, through his rulings and persuasive personality, muscled up the judiciary as a legitimate and independent third branch of government.”

Chief Justice George was the recipient of the National Center for State Court’s 2002 William H. Rehnquist Award for Judicial Excellence and a past president of the Conference of Chief Justices, which represents the top judicial officers of the nation’s states and territories.