The People’s Court
Marymount alumna makes fair access to the court system a hallmark of her judicial career.
Kathleen O’Leary has spent almost 33 years in court, 27 of them on the bench. She began as a young public defender, served as a trial court judge and now is a member of the California Court of Appeals. As a female judge, O’Leary has been a groundbreaker. As a judge committed to making the court system accessible to all, she has been an award-winner.
O’Leary graduated from Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles and worked for a state assembly member, the Orange County Office of the Public Defender and in private practice. Her judicial career began in 1981, when she served as a judge at the West Orange County Municipal Court. Five years later, she was appointed to the Superior Court of Orange County and was elected presiding judge in 1998. She was the first woman in Orange County to hold that position, and one of few female Superior Court presiding judges in California.
“Becoming the first female presiding judge of the Superior Court didn’t intimidate me,” O’Leary says. “I enjoyed a professional relationship with many of my colleagues when we were lawyers, and I believed viewed me as an equal. Also, I credit the Loyola University faculty, who never made gender an issue.”
O’Leary, in fact, was something of a groundbreaker in college. She was in the first class of Marymount College women who came to the Loyola campus in 1968. Although few women studied political science, she felt the support of the faculty, she says, especially Robert Welsh, S.J., and Professor William Fitzgerald.
“Father Welsh and Dr. Fitzgerald didn’t treat us any different than any of the guys in the class, even though [women] were a distinct minority,” O’Leary says. “The emphasis was always on respect for human beings regardless of their gender, ethnicity, cultural background or religion.”
The principle of respect for others has become a hallmark of O’Leary’s judicial career. In 2000, O’Leary was appointed to a state task force that developed a plan to assist people who do not have a lawyer to navigate the court process. One solution was statewide legal self-help centers that provide people with more access to legal information. O’Leary also is part of a state panel that works to improve the availability of court interpreters in criminal proceedings.
“Fair access to the courts is the mark of a civilized society,” O’Leary says. “If people do not feel welcome in our court system to solve their disputes, they will find other ways to do it. I don’t think it’s in their best interest or in the best interest of society for that to happen.”
In January 2006, O’Leary received the Orange County Bar Association’s Franklin G. West Award. It recognizes attorneys or judges whose lifetime achievements have advanced justice and the law. A year later, she was honored for her commitment to improving access when she was named the recipient of the Benjamin Aranda III Access to Justice Award (which pays tribute to Benjamin Aranda ’62, Law ’69).
O’Leary credits her commitment to justice to her education at Immaculate Heart High School in Los Angeles, and she says it was reinforced in college. “My education helped shape my social consciousness. I was taught to have empathy for my fellow man and to develop the wisdom to find the right path and the courage to follow that path,” O’Leary says. —Fred Puza
Kathleen O’Leary
[LibArts ’72]
LMU Mentors
William Fitzgerald, retired chair, Department of Political Science;
Robert Welsh, S.J., retired professor, Department of Political Science
Most Important U.S. Legal Case
Mendez v. Westminster, a 1946 federal court case in Orange County that led to the end of segregation of Mexican and Mexican-American students in California public schools