I have done a quick search on her 2nd Amendment stand and haven't been able to come up with her rulings on this subject. As most are aware, we have (unfortunately) many unconstitutional gun laws here, and the RAT appointed state supreme court has failed miserably to recognize the supremacy of federal BOR protections. Anyone else have better luck?

Justice Brown Dissents Against Ruling Banning Gun Shows

Counties and cities can ban gun shows, court rules

DAVID KRAVETS
Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO ---- Counties and cities in California may ban gun shows on their fairgrounds and other government properties, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The 6-1 decision in two cases backs local regulations banning weapons at flea markets in Los Angeles and Alameda counties. The two ordinances were passed there in 1999 among concerns that gun shows tarred the image of the counties and promoted violence.

The decision, if it stands, is expected to set off an avalanche of similar ordinances across the state. In briefs filed to the court, representatives from at least 20 cities and counties urged the justices to grant them such powers.

California's justices have never ruled on whether statewide regulation of gun sales leaves room for stronger local regulations. Until Monday, the high court has left those decisions for the lower courts to decide.

A state appeals court overturned San Francisco's 1982 ban on handgun possession, saying cities and counties cannot write such laws. But in 1998, another appeals court upheld West Hollywood's ban on cheap handguns known as Saturday Night Specials, saying a city could outlaw a gun that was legal in other parts of the state.

But on Monday, the justices entered the politically charged debate, ruling in two cases that local governments are free to outlaw gun shows that commonly occur on county fairgrounds.

"Alameda County has the authority to prohibit the operation of gun shows held on its property," Justice Carlos R. Moreno wrote in his first majority opinion since taking office in October.

In sharp dissent, Justice Janice Rogers Brown said such an initiative by a local government "exceeds its regulatory authority."

The gun industry argued to the seven justices that local governments are powerless to regulate the industry because the Legislature has authorized gun shows on public property. The industry said the local laws were pre-empted by state rules.

The two cases reached the high court after a federal appeals court, unsure of how to interpret California law, asked California's justices to intervene.

Monday's rulings do not reach into whether local governments can ban gun sales on private property. The cases only involve whether the bans can occur on public government-owned property.

The high court's ruling, however, does not end litigation in the dispute.

The justices' conclusion was forwarded to a federal appeals court hearing the two cases. Monday's decision informs the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on how to apply state law, but federal First Amendment questions remain in the litigation brought by the gun industry.

Still unresolved in the pending litigation is whether barring gun shows violates First Amendment protections of speech. Five years ago, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit overturned Santa Clara County's gun-show ban, ruling that gun sales were protected commercial speech.

The gun industry predicts the appeals court will rule the same way in the pending two cases. Industry representatives said blocking weapons shows would create a slippery slope to outlawing other types of trade shows.

"Suppose a county enacted an ordinance saying people who like to engage in the hobby of collecting Indian artifacts can no longer hold shows at the county fairground"? asked Donald E. J. Kilmer Jr., a gun industry attorney. "How do you think that would sit?"

He said the gun industry's biggest worry is that one California local government after the next would ban them. He added that no other state allows their local governments to ban gun shows on their property.

Cameron Baker, an attorney for the city and county of San Francisco, said local governments can now justify banning gun shows because of today's violent climate. "What is the justification for having to possess or sell a firearm on county property?" he asked.

San Francisco, in court briefs on behalf of nearly two dozen local governments, urged the court to give them the power to block the gun shows because "gun violence is an epidemic ravaging communities throughout California."

The National Association of Arms Shows, the Second Amendment Foundation and others urged the court to rule otherwise.

"Aside from educational opportunity, gun shows also are a political forum for views evaluating, and often criticizing, the effectiveness of gun control laws," the groups wrote. "Regardless of whether these criticisms are correct, criticism of gun control laws is core political speech."

Alameda County outlawed gun possession on county property in 1999 in response to a shooting at the fairgrounds in Pleasanton the year before.

Los Angeles County issued its ban the same year at the fairgrounds in Pomona. At the time, county lawmakers said that gun violence "has ravaged the lives of individuals."

There are 2,500 licensed firearms dealers in California. The same 10-day waiting period for persons to purchase weapons at a California gun store applies to weapons purchased at the state's gun shows. Only licensed firearm dealers can sell weapons in the state. Convicted felons are banned from buying them.

The cases are Great Western Shows v. Los Angeles County, S091547 and Nordyke v. King, S091549.

4/23/02

www.sfgate.com Return to regular view

NEWSMAKER PROFILE
Janice Rogers Brown
Majority opinion -- passionate but hard to peg
State Supreme Court's wild card could be key in upcoming votes
Harriet Chiang, Chronicle Legal Affairs Writer
Sunday, April 29, 2001
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2001/04/29/MN203138.DTL

On first take, it's hard to believe that Janice Rogers Brown, the daughter of Alabama sharecroppers and the first African American woman on the California Supreme Court, would write a decision jeopardizing hundreds of affirmative action programs throughout the state.

But friends say Brown has always resisted stereotypes based on her gender or race. A conservative and a Republican, she was Gov. Pete Wilson's chief legal adviser and eventually became his final appointment to the state's highest court.

After four years as a justice, Brown has staked a claim for herself as the outspoken conservative on a court steering a moderate course. Her opinions are pointed and provocative, and she doesn't mind taking swipes at her colleagues.

"She's a very gutsy justice," said Gerald Uelmen, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, who closely follows the court. "She's not afraid to stand alone."

And with the court increasingly divided, Brown could play a pivotal role in the next few months as justices decide key issues of gun control, jury nullification and taxpayer rights. The court will also tackle a case -- the first of its kind nationally -- involving the 101 California St. shooting. In it, justices will decide whether gunmakers can be held legally responsible for the criminal use of weapons.

Brown is best known for her November decision upholding Proposition 209, the 1996 voter-approved initiative barring preferential treatment for women and minorities. In writing the majority opinion, Brown attacked the entire history of affirmative action, a move that Chief Justice Ronald George, in a rare dissent, condemned as being "unnecessary and inappropriate."

Ward Connerly, one of the prime backers in the 1996 initiative, is a big fan of Brown's. He says she has "a profound respect for civil rights," but also believes in individual responsibility. Although she is a prominent minority woman, he said, "she doesn't carry on her shoulders the burdens of anybody else or the expectations of anybody else."

A liberal in her college days, the 51-year-old justice became a conservative after law school convinced her that the courts should be not be used for sweeping social changes.

She is full of contradictions and also unpredictable. She anchors the right wing of the high court, but occasionally displays an independent streak and bolts to the liberal side in both criminal and civil matters, suggesting a libertarian leaning.

As a conservative, she has voted to require drug testing of employees and to allow cities to clear the streets of gang members. But she joined the liberal members in objecting to child molesters being prosecuted years after the alleged crime.

She is a quiet, intensely private person -- Brown refused repeated requests to be interviewed for this story and others. In court, she asks few questions when lawyers argue their cases. But when she writes an opinion, she becomes a pugnacious street fighter on legal-size paper.

"She's very passionate about what she believes in and that passion comes across in her dissents," said Justice Vance Raye of the state appeals court in Sacramento and a friend of the justice's for many years.

Brown came onto the court in 1996 amid controversy. She was the only justice ever to be rated "not qualified" by the state agency that evaluates all nominees to the court. The State Bar Commission on Judicial Nominees found her inexperienced -- she had been an appellate court judge for less than two years -- and overly subjective.

Five years later, she has surprised even liberal commentators, who say they are impressed with her intelligence, historical perspective and independence.

Her bare-knuckles style of writing can delight legal experts or make them wince. At the very least, she shakes the stereotype of court opinions as mind- numbingly dull recitations.

Even when she's in the majority, she often writes separate opinions, taking a more extreme position than the rest.

Brown sprinkles her decisions with quotes and characters from Plato's "Republic," George Washington's farewell address, John Grisham novels and songwriter Billy Preston's 1970s song "Nothing From Nothing Leaves Nothing."

Some legal experts find her approach a welcome contrast to most decisions, which tend to be dry and written by law clerks. But court observers say she can get unnecessarily personal with those who disagree with her.

"She's not building consensus," said one appellate court judge. "She's seen as stridently advancing a certain ideological philosophy more than a legal position."

Her defenders say that Brown is motivated by a sense of justice, not by any preconceived notions or political beliefs. "She's not an ideologue, and she gets to her position after a lot of deep thought," said state Sen. Chuck Poochigian of Fresno.

Her passions and forthright opinions came through in the majority opinion she wrote in the Proposition 209 case.

With the court deeply divided, Brown wrote a majority opinion that stung liberals and minorities because of her condemnation of several key civil rights rulings. "There was something there to offend just about everyone," Uelmen at Santa Clara University said.

Clark Kelso, a professor at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, was not as harsh on Brown and her version of affirmative action. "It may be an uncomfortable version of history to read," he said, "but I don't find it a particularly surprising history."

Brown was born May 11, 1949, in Greenville, Ala., about 50 miles south of Montgomery. As a child growing up in the segregated South, she was surrounded by color barriers in schools, restaurants and hospitals.

"We could, however, live our lives without seeing a movie if it meant being relegated to the balcony," Brown recalled in a 1996 interview with California Women Lawyers.

After graduating from UCLA law school, Brown spent eight years at the state attorney general's office working on both civil and criminal cases. In 1991, she became Wilson's legal affairs secretary, advising him on such issues as term limits, executions and reapportionment.

Wilson appointed her to the state Court of Appeal in October 1994. In May 1996, she was confirmed to the state Supreme Court.

Brown is not particularly close to any of her colleagues, court sources say.

Although she works in San Francisco, she chooses to live in Rancho Murieta, about 20 miles outside of Sacramento, in a gated community with her husband, a jazz musician. Most of her colleagues see her only on Wednesdays, when they meet to decide what cases to review.

While many minority lawyers find her conservative leanings at odds with their own beliefs, several insist they are not disappointed with Brown.

"There is perhaps an expectation or a hope that she could do more for African Americans and other groups historically underrepresented or discriminated against," said Lindberg Porter, a former president of the Bar Association of San Francisco and an African American.

"But that is a heavy burden to carry, that's why I can't be critical. She has an absolute right to say, 'No. Why should I have greater sensitivity than anybody else on this court.' "

Biography State Supreme Court justice - BORN: May 11, 1949, in Greenville, Ala. - EDUCATION: California State University at Sacramento (B.A., 1974); University of California at Los Angeles (J.D., 1977). - BACKGROUND: Admitted to the California Bar on Dec. 28, 1977. Served as deputy legislative counsel from 1977 to 1979; deputy attorney general from 1979 to 1987; and deputy secretary and general counsel for the California Business, Transportation, and Housing Agency from 1987 to 1989.

Worked in private practice from 1989 to 1991.

Became legal affairs secretary to Gov. Pete Wilson in 1991.

Appointed to the state Court of Appeal for the Third District, Nov. 4, 1994.

Elevated to the state Supreme Court on May 3, 1996.

Justice Brown -- in her own words -- Justice Janice Rogers Brown may ask few questions in court, but she holds little back in written opinions. Brown has a broad sense of history, an undeniable literary flair and a tendency to fling a few zingers. While all of her decisions can be lively, she saves most of her rhetorical punches for dissenting opinions. Here is a sampling. -- In a 1997 decision that allowed cities to clear the streets of gang members who annoy or intimidate residents, she wrote: "Liberty unrestrained is an invitation to anarchy." -- She backed drug testing for both job applicants and current employees up for promotion in government, calling it one of the trade-offs of being a public employee. "Such choices are neither easy nor comfortable," she wrote. "But that is life. Sometimes beauty is fierce; love is tough; and freedom is painful." -- When the court ruled that the governor and Legislature could appoint members of the State Bar Court, a power that previously belonged solely to the state Supreme Court, Brown took a jab at colleagues in her dissenting opinion: "The preservation of a viable constitutional government is not a task for wimps." -- She was also aghast when the majority allowed a judge to ban racial slurs in the workplace, saying they had frivolously brushed away free speech rights. "I can conceive no imprisonment so complete, no subjugation so absolute, no debasement so abject as the enslavement of the mind." -- In a relatively obscure antitrust case, she offered this reminder to her senior colleagues: "The quixotic desire to do good, be universally fair and make everybody happy is understandable. Indeed, the majority's zeal is more than a little endearing. There is only one problem with this approach. We are a court." . Harriet Chiang

Why, Justice Brown is a pretty nice lookin' lady.

Wouldn't mind borking her meself!

All this crap about race and nothing about her views!

Can't I just here how she is qualified as a man/woman who may potentially serve on the SCOTUS?!?

Can't we get beyond race and consider each person as a man/woman and not part of a racial group?

This crap is making me sick.

/RANT

Brown Sides with Calif. SC to Uphold Assault Weapons Ban

2002/4/22

Justices Uphold State's Assault Weapons Ban

By MAURA DOLAN, Times Legal Affairs Writer

SAN FRANCISCO--The California Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the state's 1989 assault weapons ban, the first such prohibition of semiautomatic assault weapons in the nation.

The ruling, which overturned a lower court decision, will reduce the number of assault weapons allowed in California and make it easier for the attorney general to restrict newer varieties of the guns.

The strongest weapons ban in the nation, the law bars about 75 models of firearms and allows judges to add new ones to the list as makers design modifications. A Court of Appeal in Sacramento decided two years ago that the add-on provision violated separation of powers between the Legislature and the judiciary.

But none of the state's seven high court justices agreed. "For good or ill," wrote Justice Janice Rogers Brown for the court, "the Legislature stood up and was counted on this issue, one of the most contentious in modern society."

State lawmakers approved the ban six months after a gunman with an AK-47 sprayed bullets into a Stockton school playground, killing five children and wounding 29 others and a teacher. Several other states followed California's lead, using the state's law as a model for weapons bans.

Because the lower court had struck down key provisions of the law, the Legislature last year passed new restrictions aimed at prohibiting weapons according to their characteristics, rather than by name and model.

With Thursday's court ruling, a wide ban of assault weapons is now in place. Courts will be able to add new weapons to the banned list at the behest of the attorney general.

"This gives the attorney general the authority to just keep creating an ever-expanding list of firearms . . . that he deems to be illegal assault weapons," complained Chuck Michel, a lawyer for a group of gun collectors and a gun manufacturer who challenged the law.

The ruling was the first of a handful of gun cases the high court has agreed to review, and supporters of gun control hailed it as a major victory.

Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer said that at least 120 types of weapons, known as AR-15 or AK series weapons, will be added to the banned list as a result of Thursday's ruling.

The court decision "represents a major victory for gun safety and public safety in California," Lockyer said.

If the court had ruled against the law, "it would have opened a huge gun trafficking loophole," said Luis Tolley, western director of Handgun Control, the largest gun control group in the country.

"The tragedy is that, for 10 years, illegal copycat assault weapons, like the TEC-DC-9 and the Colt Sporter, flooded California streets because the gun lobby's phony legal arguments prevented this law from being enforced," Tolley said.

The California Supreme Court examined three constitutional challenges to the gun law: whether it violated equal protection guarantees because it banned some weapons and left similar guns untouched; whether it improperly delegated legislative authority to the courts; and whether it violated due process rights because it was vague about which guns were banned.

The court rejected each of those challenges in an opinion written by Brown and signed by Chief Justice Ronald M. George and Justices Marvin Baxter, Kathryn Mickle Werdegar and Ming W. Chin.

Justice Stanley Mosk supported the court's conclusions but wrote a separate opinion because he disagreed with some of Brown's legal analysis. Werdegar also joined Mosk's opinion.

Justice Joyce Kennard filed the only dissent--solely on the equal protection challenge. She said the plaintiffs should be given the opportunity to prove their claims that the law banned some weapons while leaving nearly identical guns unregulated.

"Californians who are divided on the need for strict gun control are generally united in supporting the constitutional principle of equal protection--that the government should treat similar cases alike, free of arbitrary or invidious distinctions," Kennard wrote.

In her opinion for the court majority, Brown strongly rejected any suggestion that the state Constitution protects the rights of Californians to own weapons.

"No mention is made [in the state Constitution] of a right to bear arms," Brown wrote.

The court majority also rejected the challenge that the law was invalid because it failed to ban all similar weapons.

"Doubtless, 10 years after Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act became law in California, many semiautomatic weapons potentially classifiable as assault weapons remain on the market here," Brown wrote.

"That may or may not be regrettable, depending upon one's view of this highly charged public policy question," Brown added, "but it does not amount to a constitutionally fatal flaw."

The court defended the law's provision that allows the attorney general to ask Superior Courts to add new weapons to the outlawed list. The role of courts in this is "a very narrow, essentially adjudicatory one," Brown said.

Gun owners, however, found some comfort in the court's comments on the due process challenge. Although the court rejected arguments that the law was too vague, the majority also indicated that the state has responsibility for ensuring that owners know which guns are banned.

If a Superior Court decides a certain weapon is an assault weapon, then the attorney general must within 90 days add it to the banned list, the court said.

"Concerned citizens need not struggle with the question whether, for example, a particular firearm is identical to one of the listed assault weapons except for slight modifications," Brown wrote. "The citizens may simply consult the amended list."

Michel, the lawyer for the gun owners, said dozens of Californians have become "accidental felons" because they possessed guns they did not know were banned.

"If there is any silver lining in this decision, it is that the confusion about what is and what is not an assault weapon is now thrown squarely into the attorney general's lap," Michel said.

He said gun supporters will eventually file another lawsuit to challenge the law on other grounds. They also are considering appealing Thursday's decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, he said.

"We're not giving up," Michel said.

Perfect choice she is!!!

The dems will dig up crap on her if they havta hire Flint and make crap up.

IT WON"T WORK!!!

Keep reading other posts in this thread.

[snip]

On August 5, 1997, the court voted, 4-3, to overturn the previous court's April 4 decision, and declared the state parental consent law unconstitutional. In the majority were Chief Justice Ron George, and Justices Kathryn Werdegar, Ming Chin, and Joyce Kennard; in the minority were Justices Stanley Mosk, Marvin Baxter and Janice Brown. Chief Justice George wrote in an opinion shared by Justices Werdegar and Chin that the parental consent law could not pass the strict scrutiny required by "the state constitutional privacy clause," and so parental consent "intrudes significantly on a privacy interest that past California decisions have identified as 'clearly among the most intimate and fundamental of all constitutional rights'" (quoting Committee to Defend Reproductive Rights v. Myers, a 1981 abortion funding case.) Justice Janice Brown wrote that for the majority to have reached their conclusion, they must have ignored "the historic limits of the federal Constitution," have rewritten "the privacy provision of the state Constitution," and have abrogated "the constitutional interests of parents in an opinion that cannot survive any level of scrutiny, much less strict scrutiny."

[snip]

Go to :

http://www.losangelesmission.com/ed/articles/1998/1098kb2.htm

for the whole story.

Ah, yes, another "too much liberty isn't good for those peons" type. Sort of like Scalia I guess. Well its better than another Ruth. I miss Bork. How about putting him up again.

I agree. But you don't seem to get that the fact that she is black AND female is just an added bio perk to her very conservative views.

This is Daschles worst nightmare.

There is no may they can Bork her without seeming like the Dims are exremist. My guess is that they will focus on Kennedy becoming Chief Justice

Thanks. I think it is concluded she is pro 2nd/pro gun,pro-life. She sounds like a PRO-WINNER.

YES SHE IS REAL!!! We have met her and have heard her speak.... I know it seems unbelievable but you got to trust me on this one.

All this crap about race and nothing about her views!

Keep in mind that the original article comes from Newsweek/MSNBC - a veritable bastion of leftist reporting. They're gonna harp on race much more than anything else. The next thing you'll hear is a solid denouncement of her and her judicial decisions (which are decidedly and resoundingly conservative). Then they'll dig into her past, and go after her family. Mind you, that's well before the leftists in the Senate get their mitts on her.

With what I've seen, I'm impressed and pleased.

BINGO! I will bet you are right. BUT- the rest of this threads article leads Scalia or Brown for that position. Contrary to the dems warped reality-they are the MINORITY and this is the President's call, not theirs.

Thank God, this is good to hear.

Scanning through these articles, it appears she is more of a constructionist than activist/legislative-type justice.

Let the research continue......

Then they'll dig into her past, and go after her family

Coming next:

BROWN DATED LONG-DONG SILVER IN COLLEGE!!

And where could you have come up with the opinion that she is pro 2nd amendment?