Justice Roger Traynor and his case for judicial activism

Roger Traynor served as a justice on the California Supreme Court from 1940 to 1970. During that time he gained a reputation as one of the nation's most innovative and influential judges. He wrote the first state supreme court decision overturning an anti-miscegenation statute, he reformed family law and the doctrines governing divorce, he restructured the rules for police searches and he caused the Court to adopt a strict liability standard in product liability cases. Using several of Traynor's innovative opinions, primary and secondary sources related to those cases, Traynor's writings on the theory of judging and oral history, this dissertation examines Traynor's work and his influence on American law.; Traynor's judicial philosophy stands out in the intellectual history of judging as an extreme. Few if any theorists of judicial decision-making have so resolutely advocated judicial innovation. However, unlike other activist judges of the 20th century, Traynor often handled contentious issues with a minimum of controversy. Even though his philosophy of judging was extreme, in practice, his style of lawmaking was so persuasive that most of his innovative decisions became institutionalized in American law.; Like the contemporary U.S. Supreme Court's "constitutional revolution", which allowed the expansion of government regulatory power over the economy and created a new civil liberties jurisprudence, Traynor's innovative opinions committed the law to the equitable treatment of individuals with relatively little power in society. However, Traynor's success at gaining institutional acceptance for his judicial innovations depended in part on his sensitivity to the arguments against activism. His rationalistic style of decision-making set apart his brand of activism and gave it a tone of objectivity. Despite the controversy surrounding judicial activism, his adroit articulation of the public interest in legal reform made his innovative opinions widely influential.