Sacramento appeals court Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye was unanimously confirmed by a state commission in San Francisco today to be California’s next chief justice.
Cantil-Sakauye’s name will now go on the Nov. 2 state ballot for voter approval for a 12-year term as chief justice that would begin in January.
She was confirmed to the post by the three-member Commission on Judicial Appointments after a hearing that lasted more than two hours.
Cantil-Sakauye, 50, told the panel that she would bring to the job “the promise to listen closely and analyze carefully, and to arrive in a collaborative fashion at a resolution.”
“There have been many descriptions of this job and I read them all, and none of them said ‘easy,'” she said.
Cantil-Sakauye, the daughter of two farmworkers, would be the state high court’s first Filipino-American justice and its second female chief justice.
She was nominated by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last month after Chief Justice Ronald George announced that he would retire Jan. 2.
The commission was made up of George, Attorney General Jerry Brown, and Joan Dempsey Klein, the senior presiding justice of the state Court of Appeal.
