Justice Mildred Lillie

Any one who’s spent any time at all reading California appellate decisions has come across Justice Mildred Lillie, someone the California judiciary can be justifiably proud of. Justice Lillie died last Sunday morning. She’ll be buried this afternoon from Good Shepherd Church in Beverly Hills with Cardinal Mahony presiding.

Justice Lillie was appointed to the California Court of Appeal by Goody Knight in 1958. President Nixon tried to appoint her to the Supreme Court in 1971. That bastion of fairness and legal probity, the American Bar Association, turned her down as “unqualified”. The missing qualification was a y chromosome. The Times obit is here. Much better are the two stories here and here.