(Subscription required) The unanimous court held that a 50-year-old case affirming the blanket disqualification of individual judges does not mesh with the realities of California's judiciary today.

Seven levels of white walls and public hallways engulfed in natural light with a clear view of Santa Rosa, Bennett Peak and Sonoma and Taylor mountains from the top floor. And on the other side of doors along those hallways, courtrooms with matching layouts, pew-style seating and windows allowing the natural light to continue flowing inside. This is what the public should expect at Sonoma County’s new courthouse that is slated for a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday afternoon, May 29, with full operations commencing this summer.

(Subscription required) Justice Thomas DeSantos brought lessons from Hanford farm fields, small-town law practice, and the Kings County bench to California's appellate court.

The case is unusual because it does not involve the appeal of any legal matters decided by a lower court. Instead, the state public defenders who represent condemned inmates and several civil rights groups are asking the justices simply to overturn the state’s death penalty law, which they say is illegal because it is applied more heavily to defendants who are Black or Latino than to whites.