Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today named Carol Corrigan, a state appeals court justice in San Francisco with a moderate reputation, as his first appointee to the California Supreme Court.
Corrigan, 57, is a Republican who spent 13 years as an Alameda County prosecutor before winning judicial appointments from a series of Republican governors. Gov. George Deukmejian named her to the Alameda County Municipal Court in 1987, and Gov. Pete Wilson put her on the Superior Court bench in 1991 and then on the Court of Appeal in 1994.
She is regarded as much more centrist than the justice she would replace, Janice Rogers Brown. Brown, the leading conservative on the state's high court and its only African American, resigned June 30 after the Senate approved her long-stalled appointment by President Bush to a federal appeals court.
At a news conference, Schwarzenegger described Corrigan as "a brilliant jurist ... a visionary, someone who reveres the law not just as words on paper but as decisions that affect people's lives.''
Corrigan said the cornerstone of her judicial philosophy was that "the law doesn't belong to judges, it belongs to people and it belongs to all of us.''
Details here from the San Francisco Chronicle.
UPDATE:
Also Friday, Schwarzenegger nominated his former legal affairs secretary, Peter Siggins, to fill Corrigan's seat or another vacancy on the 1st District Court of Appeal. Siggins, 50, also needs approval from the Commission on Judicial Appointments.
Details here from the AP via the San Jose Mercury News.