The Supreme Court announced that Malcolm Lucas — the 26th Chief Justice of California — died yesterday. He was 89.
After serving as a superior court and federal district court judge, Lucas was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1984 by Governor George Deukmejian. Deukmejian elevated Lucas to chief justice in 1987, after the voters removed Chief Justice Rose Bird and two associate justices from the court. Lucas retired from the court in 1996.
Lucas was praised by both his successors. Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye called him “a man of great dignity and grace” who “came to the court during a time of upheaval in the judicial branch and he brought stability, peace, and leadership to the court.” Former Chief Justice Ronald George said that Lucas “brought a steady hand to the stewardship of the California Supreme Court and our state’s vast judicial system” and that Lucas’s “wise counsel and collegial approach to the resolution of legal and administrative issues set an excellent example for me and for other judges, and helped pave the way for many of the ensuing reforms in California’s judiciary.”
Lucas had a dry sense of humor, which he occasionally displayed on the bench. During argument in a case concerning the validity of a city ordinance prohibiting fortune telling, he told the attorney challenging the ordinance that the attorney’s client must already know how the case was going to come out and asked that the information be shared with the court. At the outset of an argument in another case, a dispute between psychiatrists and psychologists over the scope of their respective authorities in the hospital setting, Lucas wished everyone “good morning,” and then said, “I’m sure there are many in the audience who are wondering, ‘what did he mean by that?'”