“Brown looks to history as he builds a new high court”

Dan Morain writes for the Sacramento Bee that, when Governor Jerry Brown next Monday swears in Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar and Leondra Kruger to join his other recent appointee — Justice Goodwin Liu — on the Supreme Court, he “will have reshaped the seven-member court he lost in 1986” and he will be “creating perhaps the most far-reaching achievement of his second eight years in office.”

The governor has lofty expectations for his three appointees to the court, telling Morain that they will “make some memorable decisions that will maybe echo through the ages” and that “[m]aybe we’re going to find another Holmes, Learned Hand, Cardozo.”

The Bee article also cites a post on this blog (thank you) that speculates the new Supreme Court might reevaluate the constitutionality of the damage cap in the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA), which Governor Brown signed into law nearly 40 years ago.