On June 24, 2024, Joanne Z. Tan conducted an 1-hour 50 minute interview of Tani Cantil-Sakauye, former Chief Justice of California Supreme Court for 11 years, and current President of the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC). The following 22 questions asked and answered are categorized in three parts: Part One: Tani’s journey, lessons learned, and insights from being the Chief Justice on the highest court in California; Part 2: California’s economy and future; Part 3: Election reform, federalism, and democracy.
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(1) Q: How did you choose your path? What were your challenges and satisfactions as a California Supreme Court Chief Justice? What lessons would you like to share with us from serving on the state Supreme Court?
(2) Q: As a role model, raised in a non-privileged background, what qualities and mindset are the most important for your achievements and continued growth? What wisdom can you share with people of all backgrounds?
(3) Facts or Opinions? – Are critical thinking and human intelligence needed to process information and Decipher Facts from Media, Social Media, AI
(4) Q: As a personal branding expert and a business brand builder, I ask all my honored guests this question: What does your brand stand for?
(5) Q: Are you considering running for any office in the future?
(6) Q: About AI and regulations. AI is being widely adopted across many industries globally, and is playing a significant role in reducing costs and increasing productivity. (https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai)
But at the same time, AI is making fake information, disinformation, as well as its distribution a lot easier, faster, and with more impact (based on the Economist Magazine in May 2024 featured two articles: “Fighting disinformation gets harder, just when it matters most”, while “Producing fake information is getting easier” (https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/05/01/fighting-disinformation-gets-harder-just-when-it-matters-most?utm_campaign=r.science-newsletter&utm_medium=email.internal-newsletter.np&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=5/1/2024&utm_id=1877854
What is the legislative balance between controlling the harm from AI generated or facilitated false information, and not killing the golden goose of AI technology?
(7) Q: California’s aging population: What are the anticipated consequences, and how are we going to tackle the issue? Can AI offset the shrinking productive population, since AI increases productivity and decreases labor cost?
(8) Q: Related or unrelated to the aging population issue, do border-crossing, undocumented immigrants actually help with the labor shortage? Is it also related to political advantage, i.e. the number of congressional seats are based on the census? What will California do with the border crossing issue?
(9) Q: Insurance: Many insurance companies for residential homes have left California. The lack of competition has resulted in much higher premiums for all Californians. What can be done about it?
(10) Q: High housing cost for Californians and exodus to other states: Californian families are leaving for other states where housing and living expenses are lower. What are the ramifications for the mid and long term California economy? Does it lead to brain drain?
(11) Q: Homelessness and the implementation of Prop. 1: What improvement have we seen? How can the implementation be improved? Who is accountable?
(12) Q: Increase of minimum wage for California fast food workers and the ripple effects: A Bloomberg article on April 16, 2024 pointed out the impact of California minimum wage hike for fast food workers on prolonging inflation and delaying the Fed’s rate cut. Now, California consumers have to pay more for fast food because the increased wage was passed down to the buyers, and most of the fast food consumers are not well off. Is it a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul? Does this well-intended law result in delayed inflation recovery for everyone? Is legislation interfering with the free market? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-16/how-california-s-huge-raises-for-fast-food-workers-will-ripple-across-industries
(13) Q: The high cost of doing business in California creates an exodus of businesses to other states. Many are leaving due to pro-labor legislation that burdens employers. What can the state legislature do to keep the cost down for businesses?
(14) Q: What does the state government need to do to keep tech giants like Google, Apple, Nvidia and others in Silicon Valley?
(15) Q: Budget deficits and tax increases: In the tech industry, there are fewer IPOs now, and less tax from capital gains for the government. (https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/technology/why-california-budget-problems-could-be-blamed-on-ipo-market/article_197ac9d8-0f24-11ef-9f28-5f7fe6820efc.html#:~:text=IPOs%20%E2%80%94%20the%20typical%20way%20startups,are%20taxed%20by%20the%20state.)
Budget deficits exist at both state and local levels. The California Supreme Court will hear arguments on the legality of a ballot measure that would strip the Legislature and governor of the ability to increase taxes (The Los Angeles Times reports). Tax increases will further the exodus of companies and Californians out of California. Are there any other options for dealing with budget deficits?
(16) Q: Bullet trains: Are they ever going to be completed, after three decades? ( – The Economist’s article, May 17, 2024: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/05/16/the-worlds-slowest-bullet-train-trundles-ahead-in-california
(17) Q: Drought and water shortage due to global warming: Governor Newsom was talking about building reservoirs. What can we do to make it happen, hopefully not in three decades since global warming might turn California into a desert in 30 years without us taking actions NOW?
(18) Q: Rank Choice Voting: It has been advocated by some very intelligent Harvard professors and political consultants. Rank Choice Voting is already used in some gubernatorial and mayoral elections, can it be used in primaries for presidential elections? (As advocated in the book The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy, by Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor.)
(19) Q: Term Limits for US Supreme Court Justices: Stanford Professors Larry Diamond and other highly respected voices recommend term limits for SCOTUS, which is gaining traction widely in the US. Some suggested the term limit to be at age 75, or three terms of six years, and the fourth term is up to six years. Stanford Professor Larry Diamond in his book “Ill Winds” suggests limiting every SCOTUS’ term to 18 years. What do you think?
(20) Ethic rules for SCOTUSes: In light of the revelations about accepting lavish gifts for decades by the US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, do you think Congress needs to make ENFORCEABLE ethics rules that will hold SCOTUSES liable, since no one is above the law? If any of the SCOTUSES violate them, who should enforce the rules, and what would be the punishment?
(21) Q: Regarding the principles of federalism, state power, and our republic. This may be a loaded question, but I think we all want to hear from your perspective. The United States was founded on the principle of a republic consisting of independent states, where federal laws and state laws are independent and separate. This question is not meant to be political (I know that your political party affiliation is independent, and I respect that) . I’d like to use the current conviction of former President Donald Trump by New York State Court to learn about federal court limitations and potential over-reach.
Federalism, checks and balances: Assume this scenario: IF the US Supreme Court rules that a sitting president has Absolute Immunity, (which sounds like the power of a king), and further rules that the New York conviction must be retried, vacated, or even overruled, on the ground that the falsification of business records under New York Law is related to the FEDERAL election, even though the illegal act related to federal election deprived citizens their right to be informed, which is a FEDERAL crime, will the federal Absolute Immunity override New York state law, under the Supremacy Clause (since Trump wrote the check to reimburse the hush money after inauguration, presumably under Absolute Immunity protection)?
If the US Supreme Court indeed rules as such, what are the ramifications, in your opinion, for our foundational principles of independent state and federal judiciaries? Would that be an overreach by the federal judicial branch?
What harm would Absolute Immunity do to the checks and balances of our government?
Same scenario, same questions, but with Limited Immunity instead of Absolute Immunity.
(22) Q: About civility, the prerequisite for democracy. The vitriol, the hatred, the partisanship, the mutual blaming… All of these are eating America up from inside. What do you think each citizen should do, to restore civility, respect for institutions, public office, healthy debates, and save our democracy?
Disclaimer: I take a completely non-partisan approach to economic policy, election reform, and judicial issues. All my questions here are issue-based, not through the lens of politics or political partisanship, even though I regard myself as a centrist Democrat.
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To read as a blog (coming soon)
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(Transcript of the entire interview, subheadings and emphases added:)
Joanne Tan 0:01
This interview of Tani Cantil-Sakauye, former Chief Justice of California Supreme Court and current president of the Public Policy Institute of California, is published in three parts with about 21 questions total. Here is Part One of Three:Tani’s journey, lessons learned, and insights. Coming up. In Part Two, we will talk about California’s economy and future. Then in Part Three, we will discuss election reform, federalism, and democracy. Before I have the great honor to introduce Tani Cantil Sakauye, I’d like to briefly introduce myself. I’m Joanne Tan, the host and producer of the 10 Plus Podcast, “Interviews of Notables and Influencers”. I’m the CEO of 10 Plus Brand Inc, a brand building and brand marketing agency for companies and leaders. Growing brands, business or personal, is my passion. I also have a law degree, and I career-coach attorneys and executives, and manage brands of board members, leadership coaches, and consultants. I have lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area for 36 years. It was in San Francisco that I became a US citizen almost 30 years ago. I care deeply about my home state and our country whose ideals and values inspired me to leave everything behind in China 42 years ago. I’d like to give back to my beloved California and America. Tani Cantil-Sakauye was a former Chief Justice of California Supreme Court for 11 years. Currently, she’s the president and CEO of the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), where she holds the Walter and Ethel Hewlett Chair in Understanding California’s Future. One of the founders of PPIC was Walter Hewlett, also one of the founders of Hewlett Packard. PPIC provides data-based research to the state legislature to help make better policies for all Californians. California legislators and executive officials do listen to Tani and PPIC. May I call you Tani?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 2:23
Yes Joanne.
Joanne Tan 2:24
Thank you. From 2011 to 2022 Tani served as a 28th Chief Justice of California and led the judiciary as the chair of the Judicial Council, the constitutional policy and the rulemaking body of the judicial branch, the first person of color and the second woman to do so. Before she was elected statewide as the Chief Justice of California, she served more than 20 years on California appellate court and trial courts, and was appointed or elevated to higher office by three governors. Earlier in her career, she served as Deputy District Attorney for the Sacramento DA Office, and on the senior staff of Governor Deukmejian as legal affairs and the legislative Deputy Secretary. Thank you so much, Tani for this great honor.
Now my first question: How did you choose your path? What were your challenges and satisfactions as a California Supreme Court Chief Justice? What lessons would you like to share with us from serving on the state Supreme Court?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 3:33
Thank you, Joanne, and thank you for having me on your podcast. It’s a pleasure to see you again and to be with you for this time. I chose my path that is the law, primarily because my family experience was one that had demonstrated a lot of unjustness in their lives. So to begin with, my parents were not formally educated. My father had a second grade education from Hawaii, and my mother had gone to high school up and down California’s smaller delta cities, because she was a farm worker with her family, her nine brothers and sisters, and they moved from crop to crop. So she was itinerant in high school, and so when they came together and had children for them, like many people who come to California or America, education was preeminent in their minds that their children get one.
So I am a product of public schools, primarily, and they always wanted me to get a job and to be secure. And yet, at the same time, I observed myself as a child, the youngest of a big family, I noticed that things just weren’t right with my surroundings. For example, even though we owned the property, we were evicted out of our family home where we lived with our grandmother, because the government was coming in to take over our property, they considered our home “blight”. And so eminent domain was coming to take over, and they forcibly evicted us and moved us from our property. But my parents went to fight that. My mother, who was a very strong woman, decided to go to court by herself, without an attorney, to fight eminent domain. And now I know about eminent domain, and it was a losing battle from the beginning, but she was not so much upset about losing in court, she was more upset about how they had treated her. She felt ashamed and humiliated by a male judge and the male attorneys, and she came back home to tell us and that we had lost, but how sad she was about her treatment at court, and I remember that because I was maybe eight years old at the time, my mother a proud woman, a very self… I want to say, an industrious woman, coming back to tell me that she had been disrespected. It’s one thing to fight and lose, it’s another thing to be disrespected. So I would store these nuggets into my head. And she really wanted me to be a lawyer. She never… she didn’t know what that was, but she used to tell me, I could do it. She elbowed me once when we saw the first ever Filipino lawyer in Sacramento when I was a child, and she said, You could do that. And I had no idea what it was. So my coming to law was probably my mother’s dream, actually, but I came to know it as my own and love it.
And I am probably not a person you would think of would become a lawyer. I… I was the youngest of four in a very male dominated community, Filipino family, and I ended up becoming a prosecutor in court, questioning witnesses, cross examining bad guys, defendants, arguing in front of juries, arguing to judges. And at that time, in the 80s, it just didn’t have a lot of women, let alone people of color, let alone Asian women. There’s a lot of stereotyping, back in the 80s, when people saw an Asian woman like myself, I was in my 20s, they thought I was the clerk. They thought I came in to deliver mail, but they never saw me as an attorney, and so I tried a lot of cases as a prosecutor. And I went to my boss one day, and I said, I am always in trial. And he said to me, you go to trial, Tani , more than anyone else in this unit. And I said, Why do I go to trial so much? And he said, Because you look so beatable.
And so, you know, the bias, the appearance of things, but I was grateful for it. I learned so much. I am incredibly comfortable in a trial court. I can try a case. I think about the value of a case. It really put me in good stead for what would later become a career in law, not only as a lawyer, but also 32 years on the bench, and as finishing up my last 12 years until I retired as the top judge in California.
And the Supreme Court was a challenge, because, as you pointed out, I was only the second woman, and the California judiciary is the largest law trained judiciary in the United States and probably the world. We are massive. We’re double the size of the federal judiciary. So to have a woman, there hadn’t been a woman in over 15-20 years, to have a woman come on, and also a person of color, there have not been up until recently, any number of people of color on the California Supreme Court. The California Supreme Court’s the highest court in California, and it is the final word on California decisions and California law unless it involves a federal question.
So at the beginning, the challenge for me was that a lot of people just didn’t see me as the chief. They didn’t see me as the head of things because I was a petite Asian woman, whereas the previous chief justices of California, they look like they came right out of central casting, the ones: they’re tall, they’re white haired, they’re elderly, they’re smart, they’re deep voiced, they’re funny, they’re they’re charismatic, they’re married, they have children, they’re known in their community. And then along comes me, and I look like nothing like that, and I operate quite differently than two men who I loved, respected, enjoyed, and admired, but still very different. So it was a challenge being the first person of color, and the second woman, and I came on during the great recession. So the budget was for the judiciary, the third branch of government was devastated. It had been, it continued to be, destroyed by all of the different budget deficits in California. And it was going on its eighth or ninth year, and we were at rock bottom.
And so I had to come in and lay people off, and close courtrooms, and close courthouses, and you can imagine how popular that made me Joanne! But at the same time, I did it with an explanation. I did it publicly. I opened up our budget, I opened up our debates. I invited people to come and listen, and I offered advice, I formed a task force. It was a time of crisis, and yet at the same time, I brought people along to show them the books and to ask for their help. And the lawyers came to help and did the judges. And together we fixed ourselves, we came back from it with a greater understanding and closer relationships.
And so I was chief for 12 years, and I closed out the last three years of my career leading the branch through Covid. And so at that point, one of the challenges was, we had, no one had anything like Covid. The legislature went out of business. They were gone. So the only two branches of government were the governor’s office – the executive branch, and the judicial branch, and during that time, the governor gave me unprecedented power. He signed an executive order giving me, as the head of the judiciary and the Judicial Council, the authority to suspend statute, so I could take any statute in law and suspend it during Covid. So this was unprecedented power and authority. I promised him I would not abuse it, and we, I used it with Judicial Council to create emergency rules so that people who were getting turned out of their homes, wage theft, people could still get access to the law at a time when everything else was closed in California. We switched immediately to remote, it wasn’t easy, we were able to do it. We worked hard along the same side as the Governor to keep California afloat. I had no idea. We had no playbook. We had no direction. We were all… I researched what all the other states were doing, what all the other chiefs were doing. We instituted changes. We tried to keep families afloat.
I closed down all evictions because the governor had issued a stay in place or Shelter in Place Order and didn’t want people kicked out onto the streets. We didn’t know what was killing people at the time, I stopped prisoner inflow from the jails and the prisons coming into the courthouses. Made them appear remotely, because we didn’t know what kind of medical testing was being done in the jails and prisons. Courts are places where vulnerable people are, children, older people, court staff, and we couldn’t transmit the disease and knock out communities. So it was a time of great challenge. Made a lot of statewide decisions here in my home office, but at the same time, I did it with a lot of great people.
And the lessons are, you can tackle any problem when you have the right team with you, and if you do it with collaboration and in good humor, and you proceed, because if you don’t act, someone else will, and you do need to do what’s best for your community.
Joanne Tan 12:49
Oh gosh, you led through two major crises. One is the financial meltdown, 2008; the other is Covid. I can’t wait to jump to the last question of Part One, and that is, well, I want my listeners to be a little suspended… and that is, well, here’s a hint: Are you going to run for office? No? I’ll, I’ll ask why not. Okay. I mean, that’s real leadership through completely upsetting crises.
Question Number Two is: As a role model raised in a non-privileged background, what qualities and mindset are the most important for your achievements and continued growth? What wisdom can you share with people of all backgrounds?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 13:40
Thank you, Joanne. I appreciate the compliment too. I think that the kind of qualities that help people lead in, in times of crisis or lead, whether your organization is small, or your community, or it’s large and bureaucratic, is to always sort of lead with authenticity.
As I said, the prior two chief justices were wonderful men, and they looked like, they looked like the real deal. You… they walked into a room and you knew who was in charge based on how they looked. And I would say that qualities for leadership are, you have to be who you are, and I’ll never be, look like the picturesque leader. I’m always going to be different looking. I’m a female, I’m petite, I’m small, I’m a person of color, and so it’s important to be who you are, though you can’t be any other leader except who you are, and show up.
And that’s the other piece is, I show up, I listen, I listen to everyone, and I hope that we all listen to each other, because there are gems of wisdom in what people talk about based on their experience, and it’s about respecting each other’s opinions. We live in a world today where there’s so much disagreement and so much countering, and ad hominem attacks on one another, and it serves nothing. It accomplishes nothing. It wastes our time. We really need to rise above the rabble, rise above the noise, and look at some of our real, pressing issues in California and the country, and we need to come together, and it’s best to have diversity at the table. We want diverse points of view, people who have backgrounds or relatives from different countries. How are, how are they… how is that country handling this issue? How are people who have no experience at all in the real world, how do they look at solving this, versus people who’ve been around for decades. How do you see solving it, especially when we have such a mix of generations nowadays, with the silent generation, the boomers, the millennials, the Gen Z, the Gen X, we’re very different generations because we grew up with different crises and different opportunities.
But all of us have a stake, like you said, in your introduction, having been here, loving this state, appreciating it as an attorney, and as a naturalized citizen, as a leader, we all have a stake in keeping the California dream alive, and that dream is universal, and so we need to, I think lessons leadership is listening, collaborating, respecting each other, trying to get to the root of the problem without attacking each other. I also think it’s really important to observe and to listen and to think about what other people have to say. There are no wrong solutions. It’s just really at the right time. Timing of things makes a big difference.
And the other piece, I would say, too, is get the facts. I’m at PPIC now, and we are a research institute. Let’s all start with the facts. Before we all start sharing our opinions, let’s all start from a common understanding of the problem. And if we need input because we haven’t defined the problem well enough, or our facts are insufficient, then let’s go get those, and then let’s start from a base of understanding.
Facts or Opinions? – Critical Thinking and Human Intelligence Are Needed to Process Information and Decipher Facts from Media, Social Media, AI
Joanne Tan 17:07
Yes, I totally agree. Talking about respecting facts, understanding facts, and making decisions based on facts: Now what is troubling me and a lot of people is that there are two sets of facts through two partisanship lenses. And people interpret the same case, the same truth – dare I say that – well, others would say the truth is like beauty in the eyes of beholders nowadays, Uh, they come up with very… and sometimes polar opposite interpretations of the facts. Social media is not making it any easier, AI is not making it any easier, to come to a basic respect and understanding of the facts. So…
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 17:59
Right. I will say this, we have to separate fact from opinion, and the way we find facts is through research and data, and I respect people’s opinions, but sometimes opinions are not enough to get to the right solution. And as you point out, there’s multiple opinions, but the base facts are something we ought to be able to agree upon in California or in other places, what the facts are, what objectively the data shows, and when we have sometimes dissimilar facts based on data, then we really have to look at the source of the data and whether or not there’s a bias, or whether or not the source somehow used different tools of measurement, and we need to know that. So you have to know about the integrity of the organization that has the data before you can rely upon it. And it is true, there’s polarization in this state and country like we’ve never seen. It seems to be politically motivated. It seems to come from social media, politicians, etc. And I feel like those are just facts…those are just opinions dressed up as facts.
You know, as a lawyer, yourself, myself, as a judge, in particular, we use a jury in our Calif… in a democracy to determine what the facts are. Each side, the plaintiff or the defense, or the prosecutor or the defense, they each have information that they believe is true, that they present to the jury, it’s in conflict, and then the jury makes a determination of the fact, they’re the fact finders. The same is true if a judge sits and presides over a case without a jury. If a judge is at a bench trial, he or she is the fact finder, and we may disagree in that setting, on what the evidence, from what… from this evidence, what are the facts, but in the law, we accept what the jury defines to be true.
Someone has to find the facts to be true. In a jury selection, the jury does that. And who are they? They’re you and me when we show up for jury service, they are people of the community who have sworn an oath to be fair, and to listen to the case, to decide the facts objectively, that’s in that situation. So I as a lawyer, you as a lawyer, facts matter. I can’t even begin to have a conversation to a solution if we really don’t have the facts. I respect them.
I’m also going to say this as a minority woman, growing up, I was always the subject, where people were always trying to tell me THEIR opinion. Telling me THEIR opinion, I was rarely asked for my own. And now I think to myself, I want facts. Please do not tell me your opinion, and I’m going to give you facts, because, Joanne, I respect how you are going to think about those facts, so I’m going to give you the facts, and I respect your opinion a whole lot more once I know you have accepted the fact.
So I also feel that that’s kind of the hierarchical way people in power sometimes treat those of us who don’t have the power, is what they do with the facts. So that’s why I’m devoted to research, data-based facts. I like opinions. They’re fun, they’re enjoyable, they’re interesting. But that’s not how you base a decision. You base it on facts that have been, that have been researched and demonstrated. And at PPIC, and even as a lawyer and as a judge, this is always what I’ve stressed. I know you believe in it too. Facts are uniform, they should be, if they’re data based, from a source with integrity. We cannot refuse that.
Now, creative people can make different arguments about what those facts mean, but nevertheless, it’s still the facts that count, and as an informed public, I would want to be respected by giving me the facts.
Joanne Tan 22:10
Yes. Now that reminds you of two points, additionally, one is about the media. The mainstream media has shifted to presenting their opinions mingled with their selection of facts, and that is dangerous, okay. Well, social media is anybody’s game, okay, but the mainstream media, this kind of very lax standard for presenting facts. Facts are sacred. opinions, anybody has an opinion. Okay. It is dangerous for democracy. And also AI: Well, we need human intelligence. We need human analytical skills to decipher the source of facts, to analyze whether facts are credible or not. And nowadays, people think the panacea of AI magic – AI will decide for us which is fact, which is truth, which is opinion, or anywhere in between – that’s what I see is another danger out there lurking. What’s your opinion?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 23:24
No, I agree with you. I agree that there’s dangers currently in media, social media and AI, because there is a mingling of selective choice of facts, so not the whole picture, and then woven in is opinions of facts. And even if it’s not an opinion outright – I feel this, I believe that – it’s an opinion, is reflected in the choice of words that are used as the title of the article, or in the article itself. Right. A person could write, you know, there was a traffic accident, or they could write, there’s two men outside my door, and I’m wondering if anyone has seen them, or the media post could say two thugs are outside my door, banging on the window. And when I read things that are so inflammatory or biased in title, I don’t even bother to read the rest of the article, because that’s not what I’m reading for. I’m not reading for the hysteria or the shame that someone else wants to project. But I will say that you’re right with social media and AI, we are at a true inflection point where we are in danger of accepting and believing things that are not supported by facts. But part of me thinks the solution to any technology, social media, AI, or future advancements that we as humans have yet to know exist, is that we must teach and we must model critical thinking. We must model skepticism. We must model and teach caution. You know how we teach our young people, memorization is great in school, but we need to teach them to think critically about the source of the information, the timing of the information, who’s paying for this publication. How does this publication of information compare to a different piece of information on the same subject? We need to have people, young people and all people, be critically thoughtful about whether they accept this as true. There are things what I can say I hear and I think adamantly I do not agree with that. That can’t be true. It just doesn’t sound true, and the more we do the research, we see it, it isn’t true, but it requires that all of us be curious, and skeptical, and cautious, and that we be critical thinkers. And I’m afraid we’ve reached a potential place in our development as humans that we are no longer active thinkers. We’re more passive users. We’re looking to be entertained by social media, and news, and AI. You know, when we ought to be thinking critically about safeguard, and critically about how can we teach people to manage this newfangled thing responsibly, and so I’m hoping that we we shift away from “this is good, this is bad” to what should we be teaching and modeling today and people that will give them the tools for how they interpret social media and AI.
Joanne Tan 26:40
Yes, and that is a matter of education, the quality of education.
Well, my next question is: As a personal branding expert and business brand-builder, I ask all my honored guests this question: What does your brand stand for?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 26:58
What does my brand stand for. I think my brand stands for collaboration and inclusion, and it stands for integrity, and it stands for kindness. I think I approach my work whether it’s professional or personal or social, with all those ideas in mind, because that’s how I want to be included, to be collaborative. I want to be part of something bigger and better than myself. I want it to be aimed at maintaining the California Dream, or helping to maintain and keep alive opportunity. I want it to be inclusive, because we’re better when we are diverse. We’re better when we have different voices. I want to say that I will only be in a place where there is integrity, where people keep their word, people are direct, and at the same time, they act with kindness. So whatever the topic might be, whether it’s having to do with a report, or trying a case, or filing a Supreme Court opinion, or changing policy, or planning the family Christmas dinner, it’s going to have all of those things involved.
Joanne Tan 28:24
That’s wonderful. Are you considering running for any office in the future?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 28:30
Absolutely not, not considering it.
Joanne Tan 28:34
Why? Why not?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 28:37
I will say, as people don’t realize this, but judges run for office. So I ran as a superior court judge. I ran for office three times, I believe, unopposed, because judicial offices at the Superior Court level are six year terms. So I ran in my county, unopposed. So it was but, but you don’t know you’re unopposed until the last day of the filing. Then as an appellate justice, I stood election in 22 counties in California, and they’re the rural northern counties for my Appellate District, and that was hard because Ukiah and Inyo and Trinity and Siskiyou counties that we don’t see a lot in the newspaper, they have to vote to confirm or retain an appellate, me as an appellate justice. And then when I ran for Supreme Court, I had to run as the Chief Justice, even though Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed me to the position, the California Constitution requires the Chief Justice to run statewide, it’s a statewide office, and I was told by different consultants that I… my last name Cantil-Sakauye sounded too ethnic, and I needed to drop Sakauye, so I only ran as Cantil. Another set of consultants said, oh, you can’t hyphenate your name like that. A, it’s too long, and B, you sound like a women’s libber, and you’re going to lose and so I told both of those, no, I’m keeping my name, and that’s how it’s going to have to be, because that is my name. And so they were right, though, in a lot of those smaller northern counties, I lost that county because of, they didn’t know me. So, I mean, it must have been my name. No one liked seeing Tani Cantil-Sakauye. But in the bigger metropolitan, urban areas like LA and Marin and San Diego and San Francisco, the population centers, I won overwhelmingly. But I would not want to relive that, number one; and two, I think what I’m doing now, which is not elected office, is as meaningful to me to help those who are in elected office positions to be thoughtful and create better policy and laws for those people who don’t have voices.
Joanne Tan 31:00
Wonderful. Before I forget, I have to make a correction. I have a law degree, but I’m not an attorney. I chose not to because I really am passionate about building brands for leaders and for companies.
Welcome to the second part of the three-part series of my interview of Tani Cantil-Sakauye, former Chief Justice of California Supreme Court and current president of the Public Policy Institute of California. Here is Part Two of three, California’s economy and future. In Part One, we talked about Tani’s journey, lessons learned and insights. In the next Part Three, we will discuss election reform, federalism, and democracy. Disclaimer: I take a complete nonpartisan approach to economic policy and judicial issues. All my questions here are issue-based, not through the lens of politics or partisanship, even though I regard myself as a centrist Democrat. Thank you Tani so much. And welcome to Part Two.
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 32:08
So I do want to thank you for having me.
Joanne Tan 32:10
Sure. So here is a question about AI and regulations: AI is being widely adopted across many industries globally, and is playing a significant role in reducing costs and increasing productivity. But at the same time, AI is making fake information, disinformation, as well as its distribution a lot easier, faster, and with more impact. What is the legislative balance between controlling the harm from Ai-generated or facilitated false information, and not killing the golden goose of AI technology?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 32:52
Well, thank you, Joanne, and I’m also a no party preference on this. I don’t think to this issue at least, is neither a Democrat nor a Republican problem, it is an everyone’s challenge in this day and age. And I’m going to also add a further disclaimer that I am not an AI expert. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about it. I’ve done a fair amount of reading, and I agree with you that AI has some truly awesome, inspiring, wonderful potential, particularly in developing countries, in the medical field and in education. And I also believe that it does have inherent harms and risks, as you’ve mentioned and others.
And I think the legislature, which is our cutting edge lawmaking body, is really grappling with what this means. By no means are they experts either. But what they have at their disposal is the ability to convene meetings and advisory boards to learn more about what it is, and where they need to create state law, that they are state law legislation, to provide to the Governor. So the third, this branch of government, the legislature, they have the ability to have hearings and bring in experts who are on the pros and cons side of all of the issues that are raised by AI. They have the ability to do commissions and standing committees about, about this new intelligence. They have the ability to listen to companies.
I think what they first need to do, I, though, is not first, but certainly as part of the AI discussion, is its feasibility and viability in California, where we know that AI generates an incredible use surge of electrical power. So as I understand, AI, when you ask a question of an application for an AI app, whether it’s you pay for it, or whether you you get the app for free, it basically searches the net like a million researchers search the world wide web, and are looking for pieces of language and phrases that it’s putting together to answer your question. But that search of the World Wide Web that’s happening in nanoseconds is consuming huge, enormous, extraordinary amounts of energy, electricity, and already there’s been a few articles in the papers national and statewide about where is this power source going to come from. We already have issues with our electrical grid in California in summers with power outages and brownouts and shutting down of the electrical power grids when there’s windy weather or fire prone weather situations. So we had to first ask ourselves about capacity.
We talk about it, it is a golden goose, but the goose needs to be fed, and California is having a hard enough time with our own infrastructure to build these power plants and these data centers. And as we know, building anything in California is a challenge, with all of the permitting challenges, the regulatory process, the different statutes, the payments, etc, if we were even going to build electrical power plants to feed the beast of AI, where would we do it? On what land would we do it? And I think if we did build it, then the data centers would follow, because they want to be near the source. I think those are cousins together in community.
So apart from what the legislature has to think about the guardrails for AI, who can use it, when can they use it, what can be available to minors, what can be available to adults, how do you build that, that wall to ensure minors aren’t getting into something they’re not supposed to get into… in addition to teaching AI caution and critical thinking in in K through 12 and beyond, maybe even in secondary post secondary school, what should be taught if we’re going to live in harmony with this technology, that’s only going to get better and faster and displace more knowledge jobs than ever before, information jobs that we thought were once safe from technology, those are the jobs now at risk. One AI app that is carefully crafted and it pertains to maybe the legal field can eliminate dozens of legal jobs, from interns to paralegals to lawyers, if we can run it and use and displace people.
So there’s a lot of consequences and ramifications, and the legislature has the only ability to convene and bring these sources of information together and to come to a reasonable scheme of guardrails and support, and they have to revisit it every year, because it’s going to change exponentially every year.
The other piece I worry about with AI and what our legislature, which I’m hoping is keeping an eye toward, is the equity of AI. We have seen revolutions, you know, industrial revolutions and advancements in tech leave behind generations of people who don’t have access. So even today in California, we know from PPIC studies and surveys, there’s a strong population in California that still does not have digital access. They still don’t have internet. They still don’t have access to remote capabilities because they live in areas that are too remote, or we don’t have the infrastructure to provide the digital access to them. So there’s digital equity. It’s a problem in California. We’ve had funds, we’ve had a bill. There’s major efforts yet to make that more equitable, but we still don’t have it. So now we’re building and advancing another component of technology, but, but we have to think about the people we left behind in the first round, and make sure that we include them in the next, because AI has the potential to deepen the divide between the haves and the have nots.
So the legislature has a lot of work ahead of it, and they’re going to need to rely on experts, and they’re going to need to have public hearings, and they’re going to need to start, and start small, and reassess, and start again. I think it will never end. I think it’s going to be one of those. It has to be a standing review and a standing committee, because it’s going to overtake us.
And if California doesn’t do this, we know other countries are, let alone other states. We know the UK is well ahead of us. We know the EU is working hard and ahead of us. We know China. We know Japan. Other countries aren’t stopping to say, what are the harms, the other countries aren’t trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle. They’re trying to figure out how many wonderful different ways can we employ this exciting new magic. Okay, we have to keep competitive, and we have to keep this in mind. We can’t say and shutter off and say we’re not doing certain things when the rest of the world will be.
Joanne Tan 40:09
yes, and California has been known for leading the country with its innovative legislation. So I hope we are going to still leading and not falling behind. And I’m curious what percentage of Californians still don’t have internet?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 40:28
I know it’s at least now in the single digits, but prior to Covid and the federal effort at aid and the state effort at aid, it was in the double digits. We know now it’s in the single digits, and I want to say something like 6%, I have to look at the latest PPIC survey
Joanne Tan 40:50
I see. So the next question is California’s aging population. What are the anticipated consequences, and how are we going to tackle the issue, can AI offset the shrinking productive population, since AI increases productivity and decreases labor cost.
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 41:11
That’s a really good question. So I will start with what we know at PPIC, because we do a lot of survey and data and research on this area. California, like the rest of the country, and I’m going to call out New York, is facing a truly declining population of Boomer workforce. We’re also, as a population, just aging on the general more so than others. So I think the numbers that PPIC looked at was, by 2030, so six years from now, the population of Californians 65 and older will grow by 30%, and the population of people younger than 65 is not going to grow nearly this, as high or the same as this 30% growth for older Californians.
And the interesting piece about this Boomer generation, this older Californians is, our research tells us at PPIC that this population of Boomer, which would include me, we are the most educated generation. The boomers have, maybe, it maybe has something to do with just our numbers, but we have the most educated cohort. We have, we have BAs, we’ve all gone to, a lot of us have gone to school, and we have degrees more than any other generation. So the implications of that is, with this is a big brain drain, in addition to losing workers and bodies, we’re losing gray matter, brain matters, leaving the workforce. And at the same time, we also know that young people are not going to school in the numbers they used to. They’re not getting college, four year college degrees in the number they used to, we’re worried about a generation of young people, particularly men of color, between 18 and 34, that we know from our data are not in the workforce, and they’re not in school, so we’re not exactly sure where they are, but they’re not in those two places. We’re also showing that of the younger generations, more women are getting college degrees and working.
And the collateral, if you spin that out, is we also know California’s birth rate is flat or declining. They’re not having babies anymore, and I don’t know that we’ve tied that to because they’re in school and getting education and getting career. So births are flat, and deaths are rising. And we know that deaths are rising because of one is age, one is Covid related, but nevertheless, our aging population is also passing away. So this has serious implications for our workforce.
Does that mean that AI will be able to come in and take the place of that loss? Well, it may be true that there will be some information disruption, and AI may be able to take up some of that slack; at the same time, though, AI does not pay taxes, so we in California have our budget built on personal income tax. A super majority of our revenue, you know, this is the month the governor and the legislature have agreed to a balanced budget. They’re going to sign it. June 30 will come. We’ll start a new fiscal year, July, 1, that budget, in addition to all of its component parts, has a huge piece made up of personal income tax. So when a human works like me or you, we pay a tax, but when AI takes our job and works, there’s no tax benefit that goes into the general fund that helps California build its budget. So what are we going to do when that happens? I do not know. We’re going to have to adjust our tax base. We’re going to have to raise taxes, we’re going to have to cut services. What will happen in that situation? So and an AI could fit… could actually get the work done for work that needs to happen. But I tell you, it has some consequences, and only one of them is they don’t pay taxes. You know your robot isn’t paying a tax.
Joanne Tan 45:31
Maybe we can create a category, “Robotic Taxes”, haha! anyway. So the next question is, related or unrelated to the aging population issue: Do border crossing undocumented immigrants actually help with a labor shortage? Is it also related to political advantage, such as the number of congressional seats are based on the Census? What will California do with a border crossing issue?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 46:01
Well, that’s a great question too. I I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I don’t have half of these answers, but I do know from reading in our research and work that and living in this state, how much immigration is a key and has been a key to California’s growth, our innovation, our cultural success, it makes us the go-to-state, because people want to come here to vacation, for example, for our food, for our hospitality, for our benefits, for a number of things that happen in California that aren’t happening in say, Arkansas, that aren’t happening in North Dakota, and it’s because we are a state of immigrants, and we have, PPIC has also studied and done the research that for some time now, immigration to California has been flat as well, just flat. It’s not growing and and you know, there can be a number of reasons, including that we haven’t yet had any clarity in an immigration policy by the federal government. As you know, immigration issues are federal in nature.
So even if our governor and our legislature wanted to do something about increasing or clarifying immigration standards and status and crossings, they are unable to, they are forbidden from it, because that is the jurisdiction of the federal government. So we’re all waiting for Congress and the Federal government to act, and they haven’t been acting with clarity or with any kind of expediency. California, in my view, suffers from that. I believe that the immigrant population really does do wonders in California and supports, and we have a lot of pro incoming benefits with schools, and aid, and work efforts, but we need more, and we are limited in being able to do that, and California is one of those unique voices. We will go to Congress. We have more members in the House, and you’re right, our house representation is at risk because California’s house representation – how many House members a state receives – is based on population. California’s population has been ebbing and flowing. Sometimes it’s down, sometimes it’s even, we’re not the boom state that we used to be with people coming in, can’t wait to get into California. We used to be a beacon for people with four year degrees who came into California to work. We’re less so, we do think there might be some house seats in Congress at risk if our population continues to wane, and at the same time, California needs more representation, because we bring a unique voice to Congress, because we show the American Dream is the California Dream, and it happens in California, and it happens to people like you and me, people who don’t look like the standard dream achievers.
Joanne Tan 49:00
Yes. Now, speaking of the brain drain and high tech, high skilled jobs, we have been relying on absorbing global talents from all corners of the world. Silicon Valley is the product of immigration, you know, so the federal government not being able to come up with a pro business, pro technology immigration policy so we can continue to draw the talents from every corner of the world, is crucial, so.. that’s related to other political issues, and the federal government, their gridlock.
So the next question is about insurance: Many insurance companies for residential homes have left California. The lack of competition has resulted in much higher premiums for all Californians. What can be done about it?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 50:01
Yeah, you know, I wish I had all the answers, but I share your frustration with insurance and homes. As you know, if you have a mortgage in purchasing a home, the bank requires insurance. If you don’t have a mortgage and you paid cash or you paid it off, you don’t… insurance isn’t required, but you’re then the homeowners, putting hundred thousand, a couple hundreds of thousand dollar home at risk by not covering it with insurance. And yet, at the same time, as you point out and has been in the papers, a number of insurance companies are limiting policy renewals in California by either not renewing policies, or requiring onerous conditions, or leaving California and starting business elsewhere in another State.
And interestingly, California has a statewide insurance czar, Ricardo Lara, who is the Insurance Commissioner of California, who has the authority governing power to set regulations and rates that insurance companies must abide by. And I know that he’s endeavoring to do this, but when a state actually just says they’re out – they don’t care that you can regulate, they don’t care to even work it out – they’re just leaving California for all of its challenges here with insurance, that really makes the state a place of even less growth.
First of all, and you’ll probably get there, but you know that we… California is not known for affordable housing. We have, we have a decades-old housing shortage. It’s been decades, it’s been over 30 years that we have not been building enough houses or residences to house our population, and when we do, it’s very expensive, and so it makes it unaffordable if you can find housing. So you add on top of that, if you can cross and overcome those barriers, now you have an insurance quandary. You can’t get it, or you have to pay very high, or you pay cash and put your multi thousands, hundreds thousands dollars investment at risk.
The state has made some effort to Ricardo Lara’s office, talking with insurance companies that are willing to negotiate, and also creating the state plan for insurance, the backup plan, and I forget the name of it, but at… this is what the state has to do. It has to become the insurer. So which means great risk, because definitely that’s the pot that will pay out for losses when a home is damaged in a wildfire or an earthquake, and at the same time as well, getting back to what we were talking about earlier, robots and AI aren’t paying taxes into the insurance. The insurance protect …the insurance protection program, and if we don’t have people who are buying homes, then we have, and we’re more a renter state, more and more in California where people are renting. Who’s paying into the insurance pot? Only those people who can afford to buy a home? It makes it very difficult to even think about growth in California, where people can’t afford to live, can’t afford to buy a home, can’t afford to buy a home and have a family, and then once they are able to possibly achieve that, not be able to ensure that home for risk.
Joanne Tan 53:33
Yes, and that’s a perfect segue to my next question about the high cost, high housing costs for Californians and exodus to other states. California families are leaving for other states where housing and living expenses are lower. What are the ramifications for the mid and long term California economy? Does it lead to brain drain?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 53:56
I think the short answer is yes, and I’ll speak sort of anecdotally, and then I’ll speak about what PPIC is doing and other good organizations know and are doing about housing and affordable housing and homelessness. And that is just anecdotally. How many of us know people who have adult children, and those adult children have moved out of state, and when those adult children move out of state, they say, I’m not coming back because I can’t afford to live in California, can’t afford to buy a house.
So I first want to say several things, and that is, buying a house that is putting down a down payment and paying a mortgage is one of the singlest, greatest protections for an individual’s future wealth, and it is also a source of wealth generation. Once you have a home, you, and you have a mortgage, and you’ve settled on a rate for your interest rate on your mortgage, you’re able to save money because it doesn’t go up. Unlike rent, rent goes up every year you’ve been a renter. It goes up. It goes up every year. It goes up exponentially. Every couple of years. It’s sort of like when you put your kid in college, and college tuition goes up every year, and the reason rent goes up every year, like college tuition, is because cost of living goes up. And so everything goes up and so we pay a little bit more. So rent in California is already high across the state, and it’s only going to increase. And so this puts a lot of families and couples and individuals under pressure to rent while their income is paid to rent, and it continues to rise, which means at the end of the month, they have very little to set aside for down payment on a mortgage. So they’re in kind of, in renters cycle hell: you’re paying to rent. It keeps going up. You have these other costs. California’s high cost of living, our gas taxes, our food. And I’m not talking about the nicer parts of life, the disposable income entertainment. I’m just talking about gas, food and rent, and those are all going up, and so we know then that people can’t afford, but we also know how hard and expensive it is to build.
California’s regulating process to pull a permit on a piece of property, to build a home or to build a subdivision is very high, very complicated, and takes a long time. The Building Industry Association will tell you, California doesn’t have a home building, a home… a home building policy. We do need to get those permits and those regulations under control if we’re serious about building more residences in California. And it doesn’t happen overnight, so it’s going to be a while. And of course, now what we read about, and I don’t know any about this, but I just read it like everyone else, interest rates are going up, so fewer people can qualify to put down the down payment and then continue to pay their monthly mortgage. And we also have learned that people are staying in their homes longer, so it’s creating this perfect storm of very little supply, and the demand is muted because people can’t really afford it, because they’re paying rent and they’re paying high gas taxes and they’re paying for high costs of living and food and all of the above.
So that means that it is squeezing out the middle class and the lower lower class, I guess, or the lower income folks are renting and then moving. And so I point this out. PPIC was one of the first research institutes to report last year, in 2023 that we saw an exodus for the first time in California of people who have bachelor’s degrees. So an educated population and an upper to middle in class income are leaving California, and they’re leaving, and when they leave, the first thing they do is they buy a home in the state that they’re settling in. So we have a true… we’re in this vice-like grip of high costs, high rent, small supply, high rates, and so it is looking more and more like California is becoming inhospitable to families and to young people.
Joanne Tan 58:06
Yes. And then that leads to the next question, related: Homelessness and the implementation of Prop One. What improvement have we seen about homelessness? How can the implementation be improved? Who is accountable?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 58:24
Well, I’ll start with the last question. We do know that the LAO, the Legis Analyst Office, did a report on two cities, that is San Diego and San Jose this year to determine how the billion or so in affordable housing money was spent, and the LAO came away in the report saying, we don’t know, and we don’t know because, in part, there is no accountability. You gave over a billion dollars was provided to different entities to help with the homeless crisis or the unhoused crisis, and they didn’t keep records, and they didn’t account for their success, and they didn’t match up whether it met with their goals. That is just unacceptable. It is unacceptable that no one can account for the billions of dollars or billion dollars that was spent taxpayer money on trying to fix a true humanitarian crisis in California. And what we do know is that California’s unhoused population has grown, and we see it now, not only in urban areas, but rural areas.
Most disturbing to me about the unhoused population on the streets is that we know that they are older people. They’re people in their 50s, there are people who once had a home, once had a mortgage, once had rent, and then something happened that put them out on the streets that was brittle, and unplanned, and unprepared for, and they’ve been in the streets, and yet, at one point they were able in California to make ends meet. And then they’re turned out onto the street, and they’re aging. And again, as we’ve heard, and I, we,and different studies bear this out, if people didn’t have a mental illness when they were turned out onto the street, they’d have one soon thereafter. And there are reports out there that say the only way you treat mental health is first by finding a shelter, a stable shelter, where they, that person can receive medical services, and it can’t be in a tent on a sidewalk.
So we need to be accountable before any more funding is released, and we need to see concrete evidence of positive change before any more funds are released, and the governor’s Prop One that just recently and barely passed, might be a step in the right direction. It’s taking, as you know, in part, some of the resources that were given to county levels, resources for unhoused, now providing some of it for the state, and it’s going to provide housing and services, not only for drug but also mentally ill. And I’m… Jury’s out. I don’t know what to make of that. I don’t think transferring responsibility from one government entity to another is what makes the difference. What makes a difference is accountability, and getting people to report back how that money is being used, and what progress is being made, and if none is made, then it means trying something different that can be positive.
Joanne Tan 1:01:28
Yes, is there a mechanism for auditing the money?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 1:01:33
Oh, absolutely, there’s a mechanism. They could build it into the grant itself. We’ll give you a $250,000 and you report quarterly, telling us what you spent it on, telling us what your what your goal is, how you’re going to use it, what you spent it on, and what was achieved, and why or why not was that achieved? We all account. Everybody accounts. You know, it’s a matter of being responsible.
Joanne Tan 1:01:55
Yeah, why wasn’t that done?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 1:01:57
I don’t know.
Joanne Tan 1:02:00
Okay, another question about the increase of minimum wage for California fast food workers and hotel workers and the ripple effects. A Bloomberg article on April 16, 2024 pointed out the impact of California minimum wage hike for fast food workers on prolonging inflation and delaying the Fed’s rate cut. Now, California consumers have to pay more for fast food because the increased wage was passed down to the buyers, and most of the fast food consumers are not well off. Is it a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, that this well intended law results in delayed inflation recovery for everyone? Is legislation interfering with a free market?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 1:02:49
Well, that’s a big question. It’s a loaded question. I don’t, I don’t… I mean, I can see the opinions on each side, but I also tend to think the data isn’t in yet. California’s increased minimum wage for these two areas of work is still new. It’s relatively new. It didn’t go into effect in April. I suppose we don’t have data on that at PPIC. I know anecdotally, it sort of sounds like, Well, that makes sense. You raise, if you raise wages, you rate, the company raises prices, and when the company raises prices, it means that people won’t be purchasing as often because of the added impact on their wallet, and so they’re not spending as much. And so you lay people off, and then, of course, you still have high costs of living, because now just even fast food is expensive, and I’ve also heard the argument, and I don’t know if this is true, that that it’s misplaced law, because most minimum wage workers in fast food restaurants are not people… they’re usually young people, and they live at home. They’re not paying a mortgage, not paying rent, for the most part. So living wage matters, but maybe to an older generation of people who are actually that is their job, as opposed to a transitory or a summer job. I’ve heard that argument. I don’t know if it’s true or not, and I think we need to wait on the data, but I certainly see that it’s pretty… the anecdotes seem like low hanging fruit.
Joanne Tan 1:04:19
Now next question is about the high cost of doing business in California, which increases the exodus of businesses to other states, many are leaving due to pro labor legislation that burdens employers. What can the state legislators do to keep the cost down for businesses?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 1:04:40
That’s another good question, and I’m going to just… My disclaimer throughout all of this is I don’t have the answers but I have, we have facts, and we have all had experience in some of these. I’ll first start by saying that the California Labor Code, that is the set of laws that are on the books that have been passed by multiple decades of generations of legislators. So this current group of legislators and this current governor are not responsible for the labor code as people interpret it, but the labor code, the laws having to do with labor in California, which are very, very old, are all pro-employee. They’re written to provide protection for the employee against the employer. And if you read California Supreme Court decisions, that’s almost always a statement that the court makes in interpreting any kind of labor law case, and that is, California’s labor laws as written are intended to be very employee protective.
And then on top of the wage laws, we have regulations, including wage orders as part of those regulations that also govern working industries, and they’re also very, and they say so, they explicitly are protective of the employee. Now maybe it’s true that some of these laws were written at a time when unions weren’t as strong, when employees did need protection from employers, because some of these laws go back to the days of child labor, and when women were first introduced into the labor market, and women and children were were overworked. So we have a long history in California, and it pertains and continues today. And so really, you are right, California is known as being a pro labor state.
I’ve heard it said that the courts are pro labor, and I always say, well, that’s because the laws are pro labor, frankly. And so businesses have a hard time, and it is rough, and it is challenging to be able to work profitably and innovatively in California under such laws. And so really, it requires a revisiting, if the legislature is willing to do so, a revisiting of those laws to find a way that could, perhaps, in the business world’s viewpoint be more balanced. But currently, as written, we are continue to be a very protective state.
Joanne Tan 1:07:19
Now, what does the state government need to do to keep tech giants like Google, Apple, Nvidia and others in Silicon Valley?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 1:07:31
To keep them in Silicon Valley? I’m going to say again, I, I, I’m glad I’m not governor, and I don’t know what that is, but California has traditionally incentivized businesses. The entertainment industry, the hospitality industry, the energy industry, with tax credits. So at the end of the year, or during, however, businesses can reap a benefit by certain actions, by getting a tax credit that gives them an advantage to stay in California than other states. I think one of the problems is that other states compete for California’s businesses. Other states, Texas, Nevada, Arizona, Florida, they come into head to head composition – competition, where they advertise “Come to Texas, we are business friendly”, pointing out that California is not business friendly because of our regulations and permitting processes.
But we also provide a series of, we the state, the legislature, and the governor, of tax credits that have worked. Some, we PPIC did a report on some that work and some that don’t, and I think the legislature continues to think about ways to incentivize businesses not only to stay in California, but to grow in California. And it’s not easy, because California, goes back to your earlier questions, we have a high cost of living, we have high demands. We have a complex permitting and structuring process. We have a labor code that some states do not have as pro labor. So to keep businesses in Cal in the Silicon Valley, really probably means the governor needs to convene with those leaders and ask them, What does it take to keep you here? And not make any promises, but find out what they could work out to keep businesses here.
Joanne Tan 1:09:24
Yes, now budget deficits and tax increases. In the tech industry, there are fewer IPOs now, and less tax from capital gains for the government. Budget deficits exist at both state and local levels. The California Supreme Court will hear arguments on the legality of a ballot measure that would strip the legis legislator and governor of the ability to increase taxes. Tax increases will further the exodus of companies and Californians out of California. Are there any other options for dealing with budget deficits?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 1:10:04
Well, I will say this, the California Supreme Court recently acted to remove the taxpayer protection act from the ballot. So I think it was last week. So no, so previously, the taxpayer Protection Act, which would have required any tax increase to not only be passed by the legislature, but also to be approved by the voters. The California Supreme Court essentially said that’s a revision to the amendment cannot go on the ballot. So that was called the taxpayer Protection Act. It was sponsored by the California Business Roundtable, and the Supreme Court just took it off the ballot, so voters won’t get a chance to vote for it one way or the other. So the tax scheme that we currently have and the taxing power that we currently have in this state remains the same, and the voters don’t get a chance to vote on it at least in November. I think the California Business Roundtable basically said, Okay, well, we’ll be back, and they’ll write something else, and that’s for another day in the future.
But you’re right. California has always had cycles of budget deficits. We have good years, we have deficit years, we have surplus years, we have deficit years. And you know, people joke that it kind of happens in two year cycles or more. The great recession was an anomaly. It went on for almost a decade. But the budget has deficits because our tax structure, we, we are highly dependent on exactly what you said, tax, taxes. So whether it’s capital gains tax, which is through IPOs, and sales of investments, or whether it is through personal income tax, high wealth individuals who are here, and not robots. Our budget, our budget resources are every year kind of a surprise, because we have to wait till the May revise, to determine exactly how much money the state brought in in resource, in taxes, so by May, right, so the governor has a January proposal anticipating what kind of taxes people will pay, and in his January budget proposal, he lays out how he’s going to spend the state’s resources. And then the legislature gets the governor’s January proposal and says, Okay, well, we’ll take a look, but we’re all going to wait for May, because people will pay their taxes in April, and in April we’ll know exactly how much money we have, and then we’ll do the May revise, now that we know we need to go back and revise both the governor’s budget, and then the legislature is going to come up with their negotiated budget with the governor and then sign something by June.
So we do know that the options for the state are few, unless we reach – this is talked about quite a bit – unless we restructure our tax process, should our budget, to the California budget – the fifth largest economy in the world – should it be reliant every single year on the guesswork of how much personal income tax or capital gains it is going to receive every year, and then decide how to spend it every year? It’s, it’s, there’s been several tax commissions, so Governor Schwarzenegger nominated at least two different commissions to study California’s tax structure. Maybe we can avoid this boom-bust, boom-bust. Maybe we can avoid deficits if we take a multi year approach, if we base our taxes on something other than personal income tax, maybe we take, take away personal income tax, or we reduce personal income tax, and we we bring in a services tax, where we we tax for when I get my hair cut, we tax lawyers for the services they put out. We tax doctors for the services that they charge, a service tax; or maybe what we do is we do a commercial tax. So if you own a home, you pay what property taxes. Maybe if I own Walmart, I pay commercial property tax. So they’ve been looking into different buckets of funds to say, Can we tax it instead of just personal income tax? So there have been some really good ideas, some great commissions. One of our PPIC board members, Jerry Parsky, a financial wizard, he served and chaired one of those commissions, and came up with some recommendations, they just never been adopted.
Joanne Tan 1:14:23
Well, frustration with the federal political process, legislative process, and the same at the state level, it’s… we…how long can we just wait until something can be done and move forward?
Okay, so next question, is bullet train: Well, are they ever going to be completed after three decades? There’s a Bloomberg article. It says the world’s slowest bullet train. You talked about eminant domain in your personal history. Okay, see, I left China because of their political structure of total, almost total, disregard of individual rights, individual property rights, okay, for them to build a bullet train, if it goes through a residential neighborhood, oh, well, the central government has higher priorities, so we’re going to bulldoze everything. You know, of course, hopefully they will be compensated. That’s it. Okay, here… Well, I… that is a nightmare, and I don’t ever want any citizen to live through that kind of nightmare. Here is the polar opposite to get anything done. Here’s a bullet train issue, and do you know if they will ever be completed, maybe in three more decades?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 1:15:50
Well, at that point, well, we have a flying train. I mean, we already have driverless cars, so I don’t know that a bullet train 30 years from now is going to be cutting edge technology. But more seriously to your point, the bullet train is not anything you read much about in California. Therefore, I conclude it can’t be much of a priority. It also requires a fair amount of resources and funding to pay for a bullet train. It’s going to be expensive. Every year we wait, it’s going to become more expensive. And you know, the reason we have eminent domain, and the reason it takes a while to for government to take someone’s land or property, real property, and you convert it to government use is, you know the Fifth Amendment, which says you, that people are entitled to due process for the taking of their property, and they’re entitled to compensation, and that’s, that’s in a court which takes time to actually resolve, and generally it resolves unhappily, because government taking property for public use is always just antithetical to what we think about under our California constitution and the US Constitution. Do I think the bullet train is going to happen? I mean, my opinion, this is not fact, my opinion is it’s not going to happen. My opinion is better to cut our losses than pour more money into the train that goes nowhere.
Joanne Tan 1:17:22
Yes. Put good money into bad, because by the time it’s built, probably there is better technology. You know.
Now drought and water shortage due to global warming. This is not something like bullet train which, you know, not urgent. We are facing an urgency, we don’t have three decades. I mean, if we have inaction, California may turn into a desert in 30 years without we conserve water. Governor Newsom was talking about building reservoirs. What can we do to make it happen? Hopefully, sooner.
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 1:18:02
Yeah, that’s a huge question, because I agree with you that climate change and water, related to water in particular, is urgent. And the reason it’s urgent and Public Policy Institute where I work now, we have a Water Policy Center, and they, all they do is study water and in California. So the first thing we know too is it’s not just groundwater… it’s not just surface water, it’s groundwater.
We’ve been through such periods of drought that our surface water is dissipated and our groundwater has been basically used up. So we need to recharge the groundwater, and we often use the surface to recharge groundwater. Reservoirs are excellent, but they’re used to capture water and to store it, and typically in times of great atmospheric rivers and storms, only, we know that California doesn’t regularly have, that is can be predicted every first… or winters, atmospheric rivers. We happened to have one last year, which was an anomaly coming on the steps of a long period of drought. So we do need to build reservoirs, but we also urgently need to start planning and doing, and many different … particularly in the agricultural area, they’re doing a lot now of surface water recharge, groundwater recharge.
They’re looking at creating different entities and agencies that can share water, that can bank water. We are, you know, the California has what they call the SGMA, the SGMA – the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, and this Act has to be fully implemented by 2040, and you think that sounds like a long time, but it isn’t, because what happens under SGMA is California, the vegetable and fruit basket of the world, we export so many crops, fruits and vegetables, but we know groundwater is in such dire trouble now that we have to have a sustainable groundwater management act by government signed into law. And it’s telling us that if we complete this Act, and we do all the kind of urgent environmental conservation causes and steps, we’re still going to have to take up to 500,000 acres of prime California agricultural land out of production. We’re gonna have to fallow 500,000 acres in California if we don’t meet the Act’s requirements, then we’re looking at up to fallowing 900,000 acres of land in California that is used to grow crops that feeds the world, not to mention the entire agricultural industry and the families and the generations of people who rely upon the agricultural industry to raise their kids to pay for their health care, who live in these towns that could dry up and stand vacant and abandoned, because there is no more Ag.
So we have urgent conservation environmental needs before we turn into the face of the sun. We also, too know that notwithstanding our drinking water and our farming water, we have a problem with our ecosystems, our biodiversity ecosystems, our rivers, are at risk. We’re losing species because we don’t have the right protections in our rivers and our ecosystems. So we lose species. We have to move species. Species could grow. It become extinct as a result of failing to prepare and for conservation.
So at the Water Policy Center at PPIC, we look at mitigation, we look at adaptation, and we work very closely with a lot of the Central Valley, San Joaquin Valley farmers and agricultural industries to try to make sure that we can work with them on a sustainable groundwater management plan.
Joanne Tan 1:22:05
This is SO important!
Welcome to the third part of a three-part series of my interview with Tani Cantil-Sakauye, former Chief Justice of California Supreme Court and current president of the Public Policy Institute of California. In today’s Part Three, we will talk about election reform, federalism and democracy. Earlier, in Part One, we talked about Tani’s journey, lessons learned and insights. Afterwards, in Part Two, Tani answered questions about California’s economy and the future. Disclaimer: I take a complete nonpartisan approach to judicial and election related issues. All my questions here are issue based, not through the lens of politics or political partisanship, even though I regard myself as a centrist Democrat. Welcome back, Tani. Thank you so much.
Now Rank Choice Voting: It has been advocated by some very intelligent Harvard professors and political consultants. Rank Choice Voting is already used in some gubernatorial and mayoral elections. Can it be used in primaries for presidential elections? As advocated in a book “The Politics Industry – How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy”, by Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter, Harvard Business School professor.
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 1:23:35
Hi, Joanne, thank you for inviting me. It’s a pleasure to be with you again. I think Rank Voting is, is, has a lot of pros to it.
I think the greatest issue with Rank Voting is people do not understand it entirely. And there’s a whole strategy behind how candidates will position themselves and advertise and campaign around rank stra…Rank Voting. And I think that we need to understand that, that has to be something that most voters, all voters, understand before they cast their vote and rank their votes in a Ranked Voting election. But I also think that while you think and talk about expanding it to a gubernatorial or higher level of office, I would, I don’t know this, I’ve not looked at it, but I’m guessing that there are probably certain enabling pieces of legislation that have to be enacted by our legislature, or by different states legislature, even by our Congress, to permit it to happen.
And what I also worry about Rank Voting is I think it can be complicated and it is strategic, and I would hate to see something like ranked voting cause voters to decide not to participate because they don’t understand it, because they think that they’re being… there is some campaign and strategy around it. We want to encourage more voters. So we shouldn’t make it more complicated for them to vote, and I wouldn’t want them manipulated in their vote either. That makes sense.
Joanne Tan 1:25:09
Okay, so Rank Choice Voting is giving each voter more choices. It’s like among these candidates, they can be Democrats, Republicans, independents… you rank which one is your top choice. Let’s say there are five, top choice: number one; the last choice: number five. And if no candidates get 50%, then the next candidate will be calculated on the basis of the ranking by all the voters. So in this way, the effect is that we don’t have to be limited to just one party or the other party. So the… so all the vitriol, the partisanship of the two-party adversarial… It’s not adversarial, but two-party, this kind of, in my opinion, is just collapsing onto itself and not going anywhere for the past 30 plus years is avoided, so we can have a governing, functioning government.
We can educate voters about this. And in other states, governors have already been elected based on Rank Choice Voting. Mayors have already been elected based on Rank Choice Voting. So, so people there, they could understand it. And I’m sure most of the voters, if they spend a little time and with simplified education, they can understand the system. I really believe this is a very good and fair device. It gives people more choices, and the results are not two-party partisanship, okay, avoids the evil of that.
So the other question is term limits for US Supreme Court justices: Stanford professor Larry Diamond and other highly respected voices recommend term limits for SCOTUS, which is gaining traction in the US. Some suggested the term limit to be at age 75 or three terms of six years, and the fourth term is up to six years. Stanford professor Larry Diamond, in his book “Ill Winds”, suggested limiting every SCOTUS’s term to 18 years. What do you think?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye. 1:27:45
Well, I have heard of the one-and-done, one-term-and-done idea of judicial office. And at the same time, I will say I’m open to it. I think that well vetted and discussed, I don’t see it necessarily in and of itself, that idea as a problem. Other states already have what we call “the constitutional senility rule”. We sort of joke about it. So you turn 70, if you’re a Supreme Court Justice, I think in New York, you’re out. No thing beyond 70 years of age, and I think that’s true in Florida as well.
And so I think I am, I am neither a proponent or an opponent of it, but I have to think that any solution has to be a realistic one in terms of being accomplished. And I believe that if you start talking about a constitutional amendment, if that’s I believe that may be required for purposes of changing the lifetime appointments of the federal judgeship at the United States Supreme Court level, that would be very difficult, just politically, to get on, on people, on states, to get states to call constitutional amendments to ratify that change. Because if that’s the case, if you’re looking to term-limit United States Supreme Court justices, then it raises the question of, why don’t we term limit circuit court judges and district court judges in the federal system, because they’re also unlimited. And then why wouldn’t we also, if we’re… why pick on one branch? Why don’t we also term-limit Congress? Let’s term limit house representatives terms, and let’s term limit senators as well, because the gridlock is primarily in the executive and the congressional branch.
The judicial branch has no… they don’t have gridlock. In fact, with only nine people, they move pretty fleetly, even if not in popular opinion. So if you’re going to talk a constitution amendment for a one-and-done kind of term, it raises the question of, shouldn’t we do this for all federal offices at that level? And I think that’s an important policy question that should be looked at. I don’t think it’s wrong in and of itself. It’s one of those ideas that should be vetted.
And I think you do need the input of the other branches, because there are times when presidents kind of get the opportunity to really appoint to vacancies and form the court. It just, and that seemed to have happened under Donald Trump. It hasn’t happened under a Democratic president, I think, and, well, Jimmy Carter comes to mind. He had, I think Carter had, certainly number of federal appointments, at least at the Circuit Court level, where he was able to form courts philosophically. But it’s certainly open to consideration. But if it is, it shouldn’t just be reserved for the judiciary.
Joanne Tan 1:31:03
I have no problem having term limits for all branches, you know, at different levels.
Now, ethic rules for SCOTUSes, in light of the revelation about accepting lavish gifts by US Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, for decades, do you think Congress needs to make enforceable ethic rules, will hold SCOTUSes responsible, since no one is above the law, if any of the SCOTUSes violate them, who would enforce the rules? And what will be the punishment?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 1:31:39
Yes, so I think it’s an interesting legal question, it’s an interesting constitutional question. It’s a really critical ethics question. I think I joined the rest of the world and country in thinking that certainly an enforceable ethics, ethics rules should be in place for the United States Supreme Court justices, as it is for the United States Supreme Court appellate justices and United States Supreme Court, Trial Court justices, and that there hasn’t been an enforceable rules set is troubling, and it would go a long way toward helping ensure public trust and confidence in the justice system, particularly at its highest level, the United States Supreme Court.
And in California, for example, we don’t have lifetime appointments for Supreme Court justices, but we do have 12-year terms. You run every 12 years, and you run unopposed, but at the same time, we have a separate independent commission called the Commission on Judicial Performance, and we as Supreme Court justices have rules of ethics, canons and rules that we must abide if we violate them, because someone reports us, you can go before the commission, and the commission is empowered to remove the jurist from office. And the commission is made up of mostly civilians, non lawyers, non judges, appointed by – these are public members – appointed by the other two branches of government.
So when I was the Chief Justice, I had two or three appointments to the Commission on Judicial Performance, but the legislature and the executive branch had more appointments than I did, and they appointed civilians who had oversight over judges, and that, that works in California. There is no such body that I know of for the United States Supreme Court, but I think it would go a long way to actually have enforceable rules, because as you point out, what people remember about the United States Supreme Court is Justice Thomas’s big yacht trips, and gifts, and real estate while he was on the bench hearing cases, and he he’s he states that that did not influence any of his decisions. But remember, con… ethics rules are built on two p…, two pieces of two, two tenants, that there IS a conflict, or there is the APPEARANCE of conflict.
So even if I can tell you that there’s no conflict for me hearing my, my good friend’s lawsuit, I should still be recused ethically, Because even if I could be, there is the APPEARANCE that there could be conflict, which gives people doubt in the trust of the law. So whether Congress does it or not, I think, is a legal issue. I don’t know that Congress has that legal authority to set rules about that nature for the United States Supreme Court, lifetime, government – federally appointed, presidential appointed, Senate confirmed officers of the United States. I haven’t looked into that. I’m sure they have, they must think they have it, but that’s pretty drastic when another branch reaches out against the other branch’s wishes, and enforces, and sets out rules of enforcement.
When I was, when I was the Chief Justice, and I heard that the legislature was thinking of regulating the judiciary in some way like this, I would call them up. I’d call up the leaders of the legislature or the governor’s office and say, wait, wait, wait, no, don’t do this. We will craft our own rules. And then if you don’t like it, you can try to override it. So I don’t know about this Congress stepping in telling the judges what they can and cannot do. And if they do step in and tell the judges what they can and cannot do at that level, then I hope that Congress also lives up to those same rules.
Joanne Tan 1:35:41
Yes, and if not Congress, you expect either the court itself, hopefully the Chief Justice Roberts, will take that initiative and come up with something that is enforceable, or the people in the United States, they… from all states, they have to come up with a constitutional amendment, which is monumental.
Now, next question regarding the principles of federalism, state power and our republic. This may be a loaded question, but I think we all want to hear from your perspective. The United States was founded on the principle of a republic consisting of independent States, where federal laws and state laws are independent and separate. This question is not meant to be political. I know that your political party affiliation is independent, and I respect that. I’d like to use the current conviction of former President Donald Trump by New York State court to learn about federal court limitations and potential overreach. Assuming this scenario – and this is related to federalism and checks and balances – if the US Supreme Court rules that a sitting president has Absolute Immunity, which sounds like the power of a king to me, and further rules that the New York conviction must be retried, vacated, or even overruled on the ground that the falsification of business records under New York law is related to the federal election, even though the illegal act related to federal election deprived citizens their right to be informed, which is a federal crime, will the federal Absolute Immunity override New York State law under the Supremacy Clause, since Trump wrote the check to reimburse the harsh money after inauguration, presumably under Absolute Immunity protection, if, (this is loaded question, so let me read the questions): If the US Supreme Court indeed rules as such, what are the ramifications, in your opinion, for our foundational principles of independent state and federal jurisdiction? Would that be an overreach by the Federal judicial branch? And the second question, what harm would Absolute Immunity do to the checks and balances of our government? And third, same scenario, same questions, but with Limited Immunity instead of Absolute Immunity. I’m sorry, but I can give you one piece at a time: so the first is, what is rep… IF it’s ruled as such, (which I doubt, but who knows,) Okay, what are the ramifications for the foundational principle of independent state and federal jurisdiction, would that be an overreach by the federal judicial branch?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 1:38:51
Well, let me say to this, what’s today? Today’s the 24th
Joanne Tan 1:38:56
Monday.
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 1:38:57
We only have to wait six more days, and the United States Supreme Court is going to answer that question for us, right? Their term ends, June 30, I believe. So they’re going to have to for every case argued this term, they’re going to have to rule. So they’re going to rule if they do find Absolute Immunity from all criminal actions by a sitting president. I can’t imagine like you, but it will have ramifications and consequences, and they won’t be, I want to say that I don’t know how they …it would be, how they they write it. Those are, they’re very, all nine are very learned scholars and experienced and in addition, as you know, they all hire top notch law student interns who help them with the research and then the lawyers who argued this case on both sides were teams of lawyers with amicus briefs, and every legal stone was unturned, and even a parade of horribles was probably listed for the court when in the briefing. And, the ramifications as will be long lasting and long affecting. And I don’t think it will be just too independent, the independence of state and federal judiciaries.
The truth is, as you know, when the United States Supreme Court rules on a matter that is potentially take… that is a constitutional right arising from the US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, and the other what 17 amendments that occurred after the first 10, then they are the last and final word. They are the highest court of this state on a constitutional issue. And therefore they speak last, and they are, whether you think they’re right or wrong, they are, and have full authority in that area. So I think that however they rule, will, I know it will be the law of the land, and they’re aware of that, and they’re aware of these ramifications and these considerations. That’s why the opinion will be really interesting to read. If they find Absolute Immunity. As you know, it could be something far less than Absolute Immunity, and we’ll have to read how much less.
But I believe this, the United States Supreme Court, whether you like them or not, agree with them or not, they have been, in their opinions, very frank and very transparent. They write out what the issue is, what the law is, and why and how they concluded the way they did. That gives us all an opportunity to read it, to disagree or to agree with some pieces. But one thing is certain, they do their work, maybe apart from the allegations against Justice Thomas and sitting on cases where his friends had an interest, for the most part, the United States Supreme Court has historically been transparent. They and they they write out their decisions. You can attend the hearings, and they are nine people serve as a check and balance on each other. If one of the justices says something that the other disagrees with, you know it, they write it, they tell you why. So I want to say that I think the process, even though how much we disagree with it, how much people seem to have strong opinions about Supreme Court decisions, the process is unlike any process of governance in the United States or elsewhere, courts are transparent. We write what we think and allow everybody to take a shot at it, and typically, we’re working off of old laws that we’re trying to apply to new and weird, everyday, contemporary situations.
So I don’t know that that it will do damage to the independence of between the state and federal judiciary, because there’s a lot of interconnection. They are not independent. It’s true, we have a state constitution and there is a federal Constitution, but as you pointed out, the federal Constitution on issues of common, common issues is supreme. It does rule. We do have a central government. That was the big fight after we won the war against Britain, is we are going to have a central government.
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 1:43:34
The other piece about the overreach. You know, I think overreach is in the eye of the beholder, and it’s sort of like the word “activist” judge is in the eye of the beholder. Some will say it’s an activist judge because they lost. Some will say the judge was absolutely wise because they won. I can’t speak to how a decision that hasn’t been made would affect us, because I don’t know what nine people, nine brilliant people, will actually say about the law. I’d like to read it. I know we’re all watching it. It was a state law. It does affect, potentially, the state prosecution of those 34 felonies. So I think we just have to wait six more days.
Joanne Tan 1:44:29
Yes, well, in my humble opinion, it’s unlikely, no matter how extreme their partisanship is – they all, they all, belong to one party or the other – to have Absolute Immunity, because that will be the last straw will break the camel’s back, because that means we are no longer a democracy, ruled by law. That’s for KINGS. okay, Absolute Immunity, the check and balance of the three branches of government, – it very much looks like the Supreme Court has a final say about elections. I don’t know how long it’s going to take us until the January 6 reaches the Supreme Court. It happened in Gore versus Bush, and so practically, the Supreme Court is more powerful than the other two branches of the government, even though it shouldn’t be.
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 1:45:44
Well, I think that’s a matter of opinion. What we’re seeing, what I would take, say with your last comment that it appears that the Supreme Court is more powerful than the other two branches, I think that in part, it’s because it’s perceived that way, because the Supreme Court acts and interprets and continues to publish, and opinions and decisions. You there’s not gridlock at the United States Supreme Court. They are a true, thorough, working branch of government. They’re not bound by politics. They have… they don’t have any… they’re not paralyzed. They don’t… they decide, and it may be in part because there’s nine of them versus 500 and plus in the House and and and how many 100 plus in the Senate side, it’s they are… they are not politicians, except I know people perceive that because they are the highest court and they do manage to set policy.
But just because the other two branches of government haven’t been as active, and effective, and efficient, say on immigration, protective rights, voting rights and the United States Supreme Court has been, doesn’t mean that it’s more powerful. I think we have to look at what’s wrong? Why are the other two branches of government not stepping up and working together? Immigration has been an issue, in for as long as I can think of in my conscious adult years, and we’ve never had a solution to it, but the solution actually seems rather political, not, not unrealistic, and not and that there are compromises to be made, but we’re …but we haven’t seen any changes, but no clarification in policy. And I’m not saying this to point fingers, but there are so many people in those other two branches of government, and they are… don’t seem to be getting to all the work that needs to be done in the United States.
And then you have the nine member United States Supreme Court who, by the Constitution, are to do what they do: decide cases and controversies that come before them. There’s nine of them, and they do. And it just happens to be that this nine has a super majority of six people who typically are considered conservative, and that is reflected in their, in their, in their decisions and rulings and opinions. So I don’t know that we point the finger at the United States Supreme Court if we just don’t look at our entire three branches of government and find out where things aren’t working, because the United States Supreme Court government, United States Supreme Court gets those cases because they’re controversies, and they go up through the system. They go through the district court, the trial court level, then they go up to the circuit court, the appellate court level, and then they come to the United States Supreme Court. And typically, these are the same issues happening in multiple states. The United States Supreme Court is required to opine and issue a decision on this point. That is their duty and their job. They cannot put off a problem and call it political like the other branches. They have to do this work, and they are, and, and I think that we don’t always agree, and we’re critical of them, and that’s part of the job and part of the territory, but we also see that they actually write out their opinions. So instead of criticizing them, I would read the opinion and then decide what parts I disagree with. But they are transparent about what they’re thinking and how they rule, and fair process is as important as the decision itself. I think.
Joanne Tan 1:49:28
Yes, fair process is as important. That’s the, the envy of the world, that we have this rule of law, and we have the system, we have the institution, and hopefully the RESPECT for the institution.
That leads to the last question about civility, the prerequisite for democracy: The vitriol, the hatred, the partisanship, the mutual blaming, all of these are eating America up from inside. What do you think each citizen should do to restore civility, the respect for the institutions, for the offices – the public offices, for healthy debates, and save our democracy?
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 1:50:11
Wow, that’s a big question, and all big questions start with answers that start small. All big problems have to start at the root. You don’t take out a big problem at the head of the problem. You start at the root, and you work your way through and up, so that the big problem doesn’t grow anymore, and can’t be replicated someplace else. I think that we as residents of this state and this country, we need to model civility. We need to be more, I think, respectful of differences of opinion with people. We need to understand that we’re all in this together, and all of us have challenges and issues, and sometimes all of us are not at our best.
And so I think we have a duty, first and foremost, to be more forgiving of our neighbor, more understanding of our neighbor, more understanding of the work of public servants, that includes the people who pick up our garbage, to the people working at McDonald’s, to the people who are policing our streets. We have to be people who can model it, and expect it in our representatives, and then we need to put our vote where it counts to with and to and for people of integrity, and people of character, and people who have demonstrated that, and modeled it their entire lives, not just in an ad, not just in a glossy, not just in a very convenient selfie or self aggrandizing video.
We need to be more selective as people about who in our Republic, we elect to represent us. I mean, that’s the beauty of a republic, democratic, republic democracy. We elect people to represent us, if our politicians are slurring each other, they represent US doing that and it also, as you have pointed out time and again, here, we gain nothing from that except viral tweets of passing kind of shameful entertainment. I do not like it when I hear, and I’ll just say this, when I hear, for example, the President of the United States deriding the United States Supreme Court for its decisions. It’s one thing to say, I disagree. I would have done it differently. I’m disappointed, but to otherwise insult them, and that’s not just true of this President. It’s true of former presidents. Trump was also in the same boat, calling judges names about “so called” judges, and taking on legislators and pers..on personal levels, all of that is distasteful, arrogant, inappropriate, and a waste of time, and we as a people shouldn’t be reading it, because we’re feeding the beast by, by reading that, and passing it on, and clicking on to that. We should demand more of our elected leaders.
Joanne Tan 1:53:09
Yes, and invoke the better angels inside ourselves. We… Gosh, this is so wonderful. Thank you so much, Tani, for your invaluable insights, wisdom, and generosity in sharing about your journey, and your thoughts about California, and our country’s future. With my heartfelt gratitude, as I am closing this three-part interview, on behalf of the audience around the world, we wish you the very best. Thank you so much.
Tani Cantil-Sakauye 1:53:43
Thank you, Joanne, thank you for your insightful, wise questions. I’ve enjoyed our conversation.
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