Desert Sun, 8 March 1977 — Manuel OKd For Court Post [ARTICLE]

Manuel OKd For Court Post

SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) - Wiley Manuel, who comes to the California Supreme Court as its first black, says he made it by packing his briefcase home on nights and weekends. "You’ve got to take it home with you,” Manuel said in an interview. “My briefcase has been my security blanket." Manuel. 49. found another kind of security Monday when the state Commission of Judicial Qualifications confirmed his appointment to $62,935 a-year job of associate justice. It was unopposed and was no surprise to the legal world or to Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., who appointed him. He has served on the Alameda County Superior Court bench for 14 months. Brown had named him to that job, 100. Manuel likes to say he worked hard because of “survival that was the only way a kid like me was going to make it.” The son of a Southern Pa cific dining car waiter and a domestic servant, Manuel

recalls a friend warning him when he was a beginning student at the University of California-Berkeley: “If you don't make it,” the friend said, “you’re going to be a highly educated parking lot attendant.” Later at Hastings Law School, he said he was told to look to the person on his right and left, then heard the warning: “Of the three of you, two will never finish.” “I took that seriously," he said. Manuel, born in Oakland on Aug. 28, 1927, joined the state Attorney General’s office in San Francisco in July 1953 as a deputy. In May 1970 he was promoted to assistant attorney general, and in February 1971 he became the chief assistant. Manuel authored articles on trends and developments of California administrative law. He once described himself as a “middle-of-the-roader” politically. He said he suspected the death penalty “may be a legitimate remedy" to increased crime,

but he said he would have to study the controversial issue much more closely before being definitive, Manuel had this to say about the Bakke decision in which the state Supreme Court ruled that the University of California-Davis was guilty of reverse discrimination when it excluded a qualified white candidate: "One approach might be this. Let’s say that everybody came over here to better themselves. If they come on a plane of equality, then let everybody compete. That may be what the 14th Amendment is all about. “But if you bring some over in bondage and their diffculties are not just societal ones but also caused by

attitudes of government, if the government has depressed and subdued them, then I wonder if the government shouldn't provide redress, reparation.” He also said that being black was certainly a factor in his appointment to the Supreme Court. Manuel obtained his law degree in 1953. While at Hastings, he served as the editor-in-chief of the Law Journal. He had received his bachelor's degree in 1952. He attended grammar school, junior high school and high school in Berkeley. A Roman Catholic and a lay minister of communion, Manuel served in the Army from February 1946 to May 1947.