New from Bison Books:
The Case of Rose Bird: Gender, Politics, and the California Courts, by Kathleen A. Cairns (California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo). A description from the Press:
Rose Elizabeth Bird was forty years old when in 1977 Governor Edmund G.
“Jerry” Brown chose her to become California’s first female supreme
court chief justice. Appointed to a court with a stellar reputation for
being the nation’s most progressive, Bird became a lightning rod for the
opposition due to her liberalism, inexperience, and gender. Over the
next decade, her name became a rallying cry as critics mounted a
relentless effort to get her off the court. Bird survived three
unsuccessful recall efforts, but her opponents eventually succeeded in
bringing about her defeat in 1986, making her the first chief justice to
be removed from the California Supreme Court.
The Case of Rose Bird
provides a fascinating look at this important and complex woman and the
political and cultural climate of California in the 1970s and 1980s.
Seeking to uncover the identities and motivations of Bird’s vehement
critics, Kathleen A. Cairns traces Bird’s meteoric rise and cataclysmic
fall. Cairns considers the instrumental role that then-current gender
dynamics played in Bird’s downfall, most visible in the tensions between
second-wave feminism and the many Americans who felt that a “radical”
feminist agenda might topple long-standing institutions and threaten
“traditional” values.
An advance review:
“Cairns deftly weaves Bird’s biography into the larger stories of the
time: the anti-feminist backlash, the increasing importance of money in
politics, and the nasty, take-no-prisoners campaigns of the modern era.
Extensively researched and expertly written, it will delight scholars
and general readers alike. A must-read.”—Kathryn S. Olmsted
More information is available
here.
