Cruz Reynoso, a former associate justice of the California Supreme Court and a leading advocate for civil and human rights, has been named the first recipient of a new endowed chair in the School of Law.
Reynoso will hold the Boochever and Bird Chair for the Study and Teaching of Freedom and Equality beginning July 1 and will assume his teaching responsibilities in August.
"Cruz Reynoso has had a most distinguished legal career in the public interest," Dean Rex Perschbacher said in making the announcement. "One of the leading Chicano civil rights leaders of his generation, he is nothing less than an icon in the Chicano community."
"I'm very excited to be joining the UC Davis law school faculty and the King Hall family," Reynoso said. "I'm honored to be filling a new chair that deals with the most basic of our constitutional freedoms."
The chair is awarded in recognition of outstanding scholarship and teaching and commitment to preserving and expanding the understanding of "the virtues necessary of a great republic."
Criteria for the chair define these virtues as the freedom of conscience embodied in the liberties of political, religious, informational and artistic expression of the First Amendment to the Constitution; the promise of fairness made in the Fifth and 14th amendments; and the principle of equality expressed in the 14th Amendment.
Currently a professor of law at UCLA, Reynoso will teach courses and seminars in professional responsibility, remedies, civil rights and appellate advocacy.
The son of Mexican immigrants, Reynoso rose to become the first Hispanic to serve on California's highest court. He gained national recognition as deputy director and director of California Rural Legal Assistance where he fought for rights of the poor from 1968 to 1972.
Reynoso later served as a jurist with the 3rd District Court of Appeal for California in Sacramento from 1976 to 1982 and as an associate justice of the California Supreme Court from 1982 to 1987. Since 1993, he has been an active member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, serving as vice chair since 1994.
Reynoso has served on numerous other federal, state and professional boards and commissions concerned with civil rights, immigration and refugee policy, government reform, the administration of justice, legal services for the indigent and education.
Last year, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor, for his lifelong devotion to public service and the Hispanic Heritage Foundation's Hispanic Heritage Award in Education.
A professor at UCLA since 1991, Reynoso also taught at the University of New Mexico's law school from 1972 to 1976. His scholarly publications have included articles on cultural diversity, educational equity, affirmative action and Cesar Chavez. His most recent scholarship is "Hispanics in the Criminal Justice System," a chapter in "An Agenda for the Twenty-First Century: Hispanics in the United States."
Reynoso earned a law degree from UC Berkeley in 1958 and studied constitutional law at the National University of Mexico in 1958-59 under a Ford Foundation Fellowship. He re-ceived an associate of arts degree from Fullerton College in 1951 and a bachelor's degree from Pomona College in Claremont in 1953.
The Boochever and Bird chair was established with a $350,000 gift from UC Davis alumni Charles Bird - who earned a bachelor's degree in history in 1969 and a law degree in 1973 - and his wife, Charlotte, who earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology in 1969.
The chair is named for Charles Bird's parents, Donald and Elizabeth, and Robert Boochever, a senior circuit judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Charles Bird clerked for Boochever when he was a chief justice of the Alaska Supreme Court.