[4] 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.
[4] 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.
[4] Worried about Yale's lack of emphasis on black letter law, Grodin hired Bernard E. Witkin to tutor him for the California Bar Exam.
[3] Wanting to visit his close friend, future Justice Hans A. Linde, in 1970 Grodin took a year off from the firm to teach at the University of Oregon School of Law.
[3] Governor Jerry Brown, a Yale Law School graduate who clerked for Justice Tobriner, needed a Teamsters voice on the board so he appointed Grodin, serving alongside future Cardinal Roger Mahony.
[3] Regardless, in July 1979 Governor Brown appointed Grodin to a newly created seat on Division One of the California Court of Appeal, First District.
[4] When Grodin displayed unfamiliarity with the California Penal Code at his first writ conference, Justice John Racanelli suggested he needed to "do a little homework.
While in Sacramento, defense attorney Terence Hallinan convinced Grodin to give notorious farm worker serial killer Juan Corona a new trial.
[11] Grodin joined the majority blocking voters' subsequent attempt to redistrict directly through a 1983 proposition, even as dissenting Justice Frank K. Richardson inveighed the court "slams the door to the polling place in the face of the people".
[13] Grodin joined the liberal majority when it granted the American Federation of Labor's 1984 original petition to block a balanced budget amendment proposition from appearing on the ballot.
[15] Nevertheless, Chief Justice Rose Bird, Jerry Brown's Secretary of Agriculture and a former public defender, was only supported by 51.7% of voters in the 1978 general election, the same ballot that passed Proposition 17.
California prosecutors, noting that there had been zero executions since the electorate restored the death penalty, released a white paper attacking the justices as biased in favor of criminal defendants and trial lawyers.