Joseph Grodin

Joseph R. Grodin (born 1930) is a lawyer, law professor, and a former Presiding Justice on the California Court of Appeal and an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of California. Grodin lost his Supreme Court seat in a contentious 1986 retention election that also removed Justice Cruz Reynoso and Chief Justice Rose Bird.

Joseph R. Grodin was born in Oakland, California in 1930. Grodin’s father had emigrated from Vilkaviškis, Lithuania where his own father and grandfather had been rabbis. The family owned a successful men’s clothing store on Broadway known as Schwartz & Grodin. Grodin went to Sunday school at Temple Sinai and graduated in 1948 from Piedmont High School, where he played fullback on the football team. Three years later Grodin graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with honors. While at Cal, Grodin was on the debate team with fellow future California Supreme Court Justice Allen Broussard. Grodin enrolled in a Harvard Ph.D. program to pursue his interest in political economy but local labor lawyer and future Justice Mathew Tobriner encouraged him to go to law school first.

In 1951 Grodin matriculated at Yale Law School, with future Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt, future Justice Ellen Ash Peters and future congressman Allard K. Lowenstein as classmates. He studied contracts under Friedrich Kessler, civil procedure under Circuit Judge Charles Edward Clark, property under Myres S. McDougal, equity under Circuit Judge Jerome Frank, arbitration under Wesley Alba Sturges, future interests under Ashbel Green Gulliver, philosophy under F. S. C. Northrop and jurisprudence under Felix S. Cohen. No other students enrolled in community property so the professor only met with him twice, once to tell him he could find books on the subject in the library, and next to tell him to write the exam questions then answer them. During both summers Grodin returned to work in Tobriner’s labor law practice. Grodin graduated cum laude in 1954.

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