"Vindicating" Rights in California

Federal Judge Irving Hill likes to recall that his uncle, a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant to the U.S., went to a railroad station in New York City, plunked down his savings and asked for a ticket west, as far as his money would take him. That turned out to be Lincoln, Neb. Hill's father, arriving from the Ukraine "with less than a buck in his pocket," followed, and it was in Lincoln that Hill was born and raised.

"Inbred in me is a concern for rights of the minority, no matter how unpopular," says Hill, 64. "Concern for religious and political freedom, human rights, just the right to practice a profession and get an education were things that were denied to my forebears." His roots have clearly helped to shape his judicial philosophy: "Whenever you can vindicate the individual against the government, consistent with your judicial obligation, you do so."

As the chief judge of a federal district court whose jurisdiction includes Los Angeles and 11 million people, Hill could hardly be in a better position to "vindicate" (a favorite word) individual rights. The great expansion of the "due process" and "equal protection" guarantees under the 14th Amendment over the past two decades has taken place largely in the federal courts, and it is to the federal district courts that people come first to assert their constitutional rights. Hill has struck down a California law barring aliens from certain public jobs, and is especially proud of his decision holding that to deny a black a job purely because of his arrest record is discriminatory. His view that Chinese students have a right to a bilingual education, first expressed in a dissenting opinion, was later adopted by the Supreme Court. In an opinion in an obscenity case, he once wrote: "The censor and the illegal police raiding party are even less welcome in this country than the peddler of execrable sex materials, and with good cause."

Hill is mindful, however, of the limits to what he can do. When there is a "clear and unequivocal and recent decision" by a higher court, a judge is bound to follow it and not try to carve out new law. Hill also believes deeply in the concept of the judiciary that he learned "at the feet of Felix Frankfurter" when the late Supreme Court Justice was a teacher and Hill a student at Harvard Law School in the late '30s. Says Hill: "Frankfurter had a very strong and very well-thought-out concept of judicial restraint that would have kept the courts out of many political matters and out of the daily supervision of institutions." Hill is wary of judges who too willingly become custodians of prisons or school systems.

He fears that they "dilute the moral force" of the bench, and he adds, "There are other judicial tasks, perhaps of equal importance, that are shunted aside."

Hill would have his colleagues pay more heed to administering their courts efficiently. "You have to have judges who take pride, not only in the quality of their work, but in their ability to move a reasonable number of cases." For Hill, that means reining in lawyers, who, he says, "are most resourceful at thinking of superficially persuasive reasons" for creating delays. Hill believes in strict deadlines and backing them up with stiff sanctions. In his court lawyers who make too many frivolous motions must reimburse the other side--out of their own pockets, not the clients'--for the expense of answering them. If the abuses persist, he can throw out the lawyer's case.

Becoming a federal judge in 1965, says Hill, was "the achievement of my highest ambition." With his $54,500-a-year salary, Hill is not nearly as wealthy as he would have been if he had remained a lawyer, but he still lives comfortably with his wife in Los Angeles.

An insatiable sports fan, he finds time to use the season tickets he holds to the games of half a dozen Southern California teams. Every night, he walks 1.2 miles with Los Angeles Herald-Examiner Sports Writer Mel Durslag. "Half the walk we talk about sports, and the other half we talk about the court," says Durslag. Hill is an unpretentious but firm man, with few illusions about judges: "We're human, the products of our own environments. Today, of course, every person or group with some cause for unhappiness or dissatisfaction with any governmental body, or even his neighbors, expects the judiciary to vindicate his rights and give him a remedy. In that sense we can't possibly meet everybody's expectations. But by and large," says Hill, "we sure try, and we try in good faith."

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