1. Rose Elizabeth Bird graduated from Sea Cliff High School in New York in 1954. Her classmates recalled her as serious, intense, and ambitious. Her long list of activities belied her later insistence that she had been a plodder and a grind who stayed home on the weekends to bake bread. Source: North Shore School District, Sea Cliff, New York.

2. Rose Bird was active in many sports during high school. As one of the tallest girls in her class, she excelled at basketball. Sea Cliff may have been virtually all white, but Bird’s class held two African American girls, including Valerie Gordon, standing to Bird’s right in the back row. Source: North Shore School District, Sea Cliff, New York.

3. After high school, Rose Bird won a full scholarship to Long Island University, where she majored in English and hoped to be a foreign correspondent. After being named the top student in the class of 1958, Bird left New York for Berkeley and graduate school. There she lived in International House and met future governor Jerry Brown. Courtesy of Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

4. Rose Bird was a complete unknown when Jerry Brown appointed her to be the first woman in a gubernatorial cabinet in California. As agriculture secretary, she played crucial roles in the passage and implementation of the Agriculture Labor Relations Act. She also gained powerful enemies and a reputation as “difficult.” Courtesy of Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

5. The legal establishment was astounded in 1977 when Jerry Brown named Rose Bird chief justice of the storied California Supreme Court. Stanley Mosk believed he should have gotten the job. Front row, left to right: Mathew Tobriner, Bird, and Mosk. Back row, left to right: Wiley Manuel, William Clark, Frank Richardson, and Frank Newman. Courtesy of Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

6. Before Rose Bird newspapers largely ignored the California Supreme Court, but the period surrounding the 1979 hearings into possible malfeasance unleashed a spate of editorial cartoons focused on justices and their troubled relationships. Courtesy of Steven Greenberg.

7. By 1985 five of seven justices were Jerry Brown appointees. Republican governor George Deukmejian hoped to change those numbers in November 1986, when six justices would appear on the ballot for voter confirmation. The court, front row, left to right: Stanley Mosk, Rose Bird, and Allen Broussard. Back row, left to right: Malcolm Lucas, Cruz Reynoso, Joseph Grodin, and Edward Panelli. Courtesy of Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

8. Dozens of candidates appeared on the November 1986 ballot, but one — Rose Elizabeth Bird — received most of the attention. To many she seemed more a symbol than a flesh and blood person. Both her opponents and her supporters recognized that ousting a sitting supreme court chief justice would set a precedent for future judicial elections. Courtesy of Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.