California
An Interview with Retired California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye
Tani Cantil-Sakauye was the 28th Chief Justice of the State of California. The first Asian Filipina American and the second woman to serve as the state’s chief justice, she is the current president and CEO of the Public Policy Institute of California. Before sitting on the panel for “What Makes a Great California Idea?,” part of the inaugural CalMatters Ideas Festival, Cantil-Sakauye joined us in the green room to talk about humor, mediation, and the “Sackamenna Kid.”
Q:
In this event description, we referred to California as Tomorrowland. If you could create any land, what land would it be?
A:
I would call it Opportunityland, and I would like it to be a place where people could try out new things, find who they really are, find their passions and their talents instead of finding out too late, or never finding out at all, or being wistful that they had tried something else.
Q:
Can you give us an example?
A:
I was a lawyer at a time when there weren’t a lot of female prosecutors in the courtroom. And I was standing by the elevator once, and the lawyer said to me, Cantil, it looks like you’re gaining weight. And I said to him: you should talk, you have seven hairs on your head and four are loose. And so, we are friends to this day, but I always felt that insulting attorneys going into trial about their hair sort of took them off balance.
Q:
What have you learned as a mediator about navigating conflict?
A:
It takes a while, and it requires multiple steps along the way and then an assessment of how the steps are going with talking to them. So for me, and for contemporary mediation, we meet in separate rooms. It’s about getting to know not necessarily the lawyer, but the client of the lawyer. I think it’s a lot of listening and empathizing, and truly understanding and standing in the shoes of who they are, their experiences, and how it’s feeling to them now.
Q:
Was there a journalist that you particularly admired growing up?
A:
I’m old enough to remember and appreciate Herb Caen, who wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle. He was from Sacramento, but he was basically, professionally, in the Bay Area. And he was called the “Sackamenna Kid.” He wrote about current events and insights into politics with humor, and he had his own column. While I was aware of all the other news, Herb Caen was the piece of paper that I would always grab and read. I didn’t understand most of it, frankly, because it was all political insider stuff. But he did it in such a humorous way that was pithy and funny but meaningful; so that was what I remember. When I was growing up, there were like three TV stations. There wasn’t cable. There wasn’t streaming. There wasn’t internet. There wasn’t anything. There was like one or two newspapers, and that was it. So you know, you made your joy wherever you could find it.