{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://arizona.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/sx6445kb5z/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Stanley G. Feldman"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/038/original/university-libraries-logo-2x.png?1711560609","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Source"]},"value":{"en":["Southern Arizona History Connection, Incorporated Oral Histories"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Feldman, Stanley G. (Interviewee)","Head, Linda (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2024-10-28 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Coverage"]},"value":{"en":["Arizona--Tucson (spatial)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eA video oral history interview  conducted at the law office of Stanley Feldman, Tucson, Arizona.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":[".mp4"]}},{"label":{"en":["Publisher"]},"value":{"en":["University of Arizona Libraries"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCopyright held by University of Arizona Libraries. \u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Identifier"]},"value":{"en":["MS839.002 (UID)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["Miles Elementary School","Tucson - 1940's \u0026amp; 50's","Phoenix - Segregation","Tucson - Discrimination","University of Arizona Law School","Thurgood Marshall","Phoenix Suns Basketball Team","Arizona Judicial Merit Selection and Retention System","Planned Parenthood","Arizona Supreme Court - 1980's and 90's; Arizona Supreme Court","School Facilities Funding","John McCain","Barry Goldwater","Fife Symington","Arizona Supreme Court - Sexual Harassment","Students for Democratic Action Organization"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Oral Histories"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eA video oral history interview \u0026nbsp;conducted at the law office of Stanley Feldman, Tucson, Arizona.\u003c/p\u003e"]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCopyright held by University of Arizona Libraries.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://arizona.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["University of Arizona Libraries"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://arizona.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["University of Arizona Libraries"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/038/original/university-libraries-logo-2x.png?1711560609","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/266/743/small/azu_ms839-002_a.mp4_1741275227.jpg?1741275231","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://arizona.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3195/collection_resources/144302/file/266743","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - azu_ms839-002_a.mp4"]},"duration":4396.82,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/266/743/small/azu_ms839-002_a.mp4_1741275227.jpg?1741275231","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://arizona.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3195/collection_resources/144302/file/266743/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://arizona.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3195/collection_resources/144302/file/266743/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-arizona.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/266/743/original/azu_ms839-002_a.mp4?1741275198","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":4396.82,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://arizona.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3195/collection_resources/144302/file/266743","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://arizona.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3195/collection_resources/144302/file/266743/transcript/77067","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://arizona.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3195/collection_resources/144302/file/266743/transcript/77067/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SPEAKER 1: Hi. I'm Stanley George Feldman, 91 years old, born. I was born in New York City in the Bronx on March 9, 1933 which is an interesting date, because first it was in the midst the high point, or low point, I should say, of the depression and the year and close to the date on which Franklin Roosevelt was sworn in as first as the President of the United States. So I'm a true depression baby, and that had an effect on everything that's happened since. Well, I should tell you a little background about how we got here. First of all, you need to understand my parents were both immigrants. My mother's family came from. My mother was born in what is now the Ukraine, in a little shtetl village, some 100, 150 miles east of Kyiv. And she got here because my grandmother walked her five children across Europe at the end of the First World War to get rid of the avoid the pogroms and the civil war that was going on march them across Europe, sleeping days, hiding out at nights, till she got to Antwerp in Belgium, where she get in touch with could get in touch with my grandfather, who had come to America some years before, and could send them money with which to buy steerage and passage across The Atlantic. So she my mother got here in 1921 more or less, my father, on my father's side, he came here sort of the same way he was sent, sent here in 1898 or something like that, as the eldest male child to establish a foothill foothold in America and could send earn money to send the rest of the family back. He was 15 years old at the time, spoke no English. Had never been allowed to go to school in the area where he was born, which is now called Belarus. But as he described later, when asked where he was born, he would say, I don't know. It was in a little town called ruts, and it was in either Prussia or Russia or Hungary or Romania, depending who was winning what war at any particular time. So he came here accompanied only by his younger brother, who was one year younger, and they came here and went to landed in New York and went to work. And so I come from immigrants on both sides, the members of the family on both sides who did not manage to get here before 1924 never could get here because the quota system was established and never changed until after The Well, it's still in effect to some degree. So after 1924 they were all stuck in Europe, except for the few who could escape and those who couldn't and get to get out of Eastern Europe, all disappeared in the Holocaust. So that's part of the family history, so my mother, you asked me why we came here. Well, again, as I said, I was a child of the Depression my father had in New York. My father had eventually opened a small grocery store and then got into some investment business or something, but he went broke in the Depression my mother, because of the illnesses she got on the walking through Europe when on the way here, had very bad health. She had a condition called bronchiectasis, which is a chronic disease of the bronchial tubes. There were no antibiotics in those days, and she was told that she could not stand the weather in cold weather and wet climate, and that she had to go to some place like Arizona, where it was dry. I no humidity and no pollen. So which was the way it was at the time. So they that's how come they moved here and they moved here. I'm not certain, but I was either four or five, so it would have been in 19, I think was in late, late 1938 or early 1939 they moved here. So that's how, how I got here. I can remember some things even before we moved first of all, my mother ill. So though she was, was a very beautiful woman, and she had the only job in the family on both sides, practically during the Depression, because everybody else had lost their job or lost their business and so forth. And she helped support both sides of the family, or her whole family, because she was a fur a bottle for fur coats and women's suits. And I have this memory before we move to Tucson, memory of she could wear some of the fur coats home. I don't know if you've ever thought about it, what it feels like to go to sleep wrapped in mink, but I have that memory of that. Anyhow, we moved here when we got here, you know, I don't have an overall memory of what times were worth when he got here. My father had no job and was looking for a job. And we moved into some small hovel, I guess you could call it on North, around North Euclid or something up north of speedway. And we had no heating or cooling, I remember. And it was, it was pretty, pretty bad. I don't know how many months we lived there, but he finally got a job selling wholesale groceries for a firm based in Los Angeles. Was not, I don't remember the name of it. Anyhow, he he traveled the state of Arizona in an old car, looking for, you know, selling wholesale groceries. Oh, and I ought to go back, if I can, to tell you about how we got here. When we left New York, we had no car. We were writers. In those days, people took paid someone who was taking a trip, they would pay him to ride in the car and pay part of the expenses. So I don't know what the deal was, but we were three of us, my mother, myself and my father in the back seat of this I think it was a Ford. And I remember as we left New York, my grandmother, we left from her house because we'd stayed there getting ready to go. I guess I remember her looking out the window. I looked out the rear window, I could see her crying. And I asked my mother, Why is she crying? My mother said she thinks if we're going to Arizona, we're in danger of being killed by Indians. I remember that as part of the way. So anyhow, we got here, and he finally got a job, and we were able, after a few months, to move into a duplex right near what was University, Heights School, and is on Park Avenue, one block north of speedway. It was a duplex, and we had one side of it, and the family, composed of Mrs. Smith and her daughter, Frances, lived on the other side, and that will come into the story later. Okay, so, and then I started school in the first grade. I guess I was six at university, Heights School, and I remember the only trouble, I had some trouble, because they had a Christmas play, and I was supposed to be the angel. My father was quiet, observant. We were Jewish as you I should have told you we were quiet. My father was quiet, observant. And he said, You're not going to be any Christmas play. And he went and told the teacher, why? So I had a little trouble when some of the other kids knew I was Jewish. There was a lot of hostility, not compared to other places, but even in Tucson, some hostility amongst Gentile people toward Jewish people. But I went. To University Heights. And then after a while, he had done. My father had done pretty well. He was still, still selling wholesale groceries. And every other week, we would travel at night to Los Angeles so he could report to his company. I think it was monarch foods, but I'm not sure. And we traveled all night because there was no air conditioning in the cars and cars would overheat if you went in the daytime and it was hot, so you traveled at night, and to keep we had sort of some air the air conditioning my Dad fixed up in the car was we'd have a water bag hanging from a window, and so the breeze From the traveling would come in and over the water bag, and it would cool us some. And sometimes we had to take riders ourselves in order to help pay for the trip. And once in a while, I had to sit on someone's lap for the whole whole night. I don't know how my dad did that, because we'd leave Friday night. My mother would pack some sandwiches. We'd leave Friday night. We'd get into Los Angeles. On Saturday morning, we stayed at a hotel in East Los Angeles, and he would report to monarch foods, come back and take a nap for a couple of hours, and then we would drive back Saturday night to Tucson. So that's the way it went for a while. And then I don't know how it came about, but he managed to agree to buy out a little business called Zephyr venetian blind company, C, E, P, h, y, r, Zephyr venetian blind company from the Myerson family, who owned a department store, which owned a department store In downtown Tucson on Congress Street, near Main Avenue. And I guess they were making some venetian blinds someplace, I don't know. So he opened this little business called Zephyr venetian blinds on Broadway, just between Tyndall and Euclid in an old building, and he worked day and night. And my mother would come in in the mornings. She was quite ill every morning, coughing with the bronchiectasis, but when she was able to feel better every day, she would come in most days and do the book work and so forth. And on Saturdays, I would come down and help sweep the floor. As I got old enough to do that, and then I got turned loose, I could walk through the tunnel we had which still which existed even then, to downtown Tucson and do whatever I wanted to do, which usually was to go. They had some game gaming rooms with slot machines. And if I had a few nickels, I'd go there, then I'd go to the fox Tucson theater for the Hopalong Cassidy Western kids stuff, and then I'd go to the library, because they wouldn't come and pick me up till library closing time, which was, I think, eight o'clock, I'd go to the library, which is now The main library, still in downtown Tucson, and read for hours. I loved reading, and they'd come pick me up at eight, and I would always check out three or four books and take them home so I could read until the next week, when I went to the library and I would read in bed at night, and my dad would always come in and tell me, you got to stop reading, going to ruin your eyes, and he'd turn off the light in the bedroom. But I fooled him all the time, because I had a flashlight. After he went to bed, I'd use the flashlight to keep on readings. So I read the whole children's library and started in on the adult library. So we had moved by then to 1939 East Ninth Street, where we had nice house, you know, small one and all, but much better than anything we've had before and with a little backyard. I. The house is still there. And I went to miles school from, I guess about the, oh, I don't know, let's see, probably from fourth grade on, probably was at University Heights, went to miles school, and was there until I went to junior high school in the seventh grade. And I do remember, you know, one of the things that I could never understand when I was going to school is, how come all the black kids in town couldn't go to miles school, or they had to go to what was called Dunbar, but we'll get to that later. So I guess I should tell you something about my memories of Tucson as I was growing up. Well, it was a small town. It got a lot bigger when the the Davis Monthan Air Force Base really came into existence, but it was a small town. I remember when Broadway sort of ended at Country Club Road, and there was a dirt road that took off to the east from there, and the north side was sort of truncated still, and I don't think there was anything of moment of consequence west of the Santa Cruz River at the time. All of the business places that I remember were located on Conger Street, west of the tunnel and east of the of the river, actually east of Main Street. Mostly we had four movie theaters, the Rialto, the state, the fox, the lyric and the plaza. The lyric and Plaza were at the west end of the street of Congress Street. The fox was where it is today. Rialto the same where it is today, right near the tunnel. And the state was. Movie was just a little down on Congress Street. So all the main businesses were either on Congress and to some extent, on Pennington. Pennington street downtown was where you went to shop, and downtown was the heart of Tucson. There was a large Catholic community, with the church downtown, as it's St Augustine's cathedral. There was a large Protestant community, and there was a rather thriving Jewish community. There was a temple Emmanuel, which was on South stone, and there was congregation anti Israel, which also had really little place on South stone, and used to celebrate the High Holidays by renting the Temple of music and art and having the holiday services there. There, there was, unlike other parts of the country there, there was no Well, let me change that. There was segregation in Tucson, the black kids had to go to Dunbar up till high school, they could go to Tucson high because the state or the school district couldn't afford two separate but supposedly equal high school for black kids at the movie theaters, at the Fox on the on the Saturday morning kids stuff, black people had to sit up, and Native Americans had to sit in the balcony. And I think Mexican American kids were allowed to sit downtown with with the white kids, the Caucasian kids sit downstairs the plaza theater showed movies for Mexican Americans in Spanish, I think, and but there was segregation, but it was different from what there was in the rest of Arizona. I mean, Mexican my wife, who came from. Mexican American family, who had become citizens of Arizona in 1845 at the end of the Mexican American War, when the where the state was what became Arizona, was ceded to the United States. My wife was compelled to go to a segregated school near Gilbert. They became citizens by virtue of the Treaty of Peace, which the last sentence of which Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo allowed the citizens, former citizens of Mexico, to be citizens of the of the United States and the territory of Arizona, unless they opted out, which they didn't. So they lived there according to the family Bible since before 1845, and but nevertheless, she was compelled, and they farmed. They had a little farm near what is now Gilbert. She and her siblings had to go to a segregated school in Gilbert, Native Americans, I'm sure that didn't live on their reservations, had to go to a segregated school. So things were different in Tucson for Mexican Americans than they were in Phoenix, Tucson. See, Tucson was established as part of Mexico, and Tucson had rather prominent Mexican families, the Ron stads, the haqmies and so forth, and did not have the kind of discrimination against Mexican American people. And a lot of Mexican American people lived in downtown Tucson and in South, all the way south, and there was a lot of commerce and between Nogales, Arizona, Nogales, Mexico and Tucson and so, things were a little different here, but there was, there was segregation, as far as blacks and Native Americans were concerned, but never violence that I can recall, never, Ever. But that's the way things were. In fact, in 1943 my mother and I took the train from Tucson to New York City, because she was pregnant with my brother, and given her illness, it was a serious, serious problem, and so she had to go back to New York City in order to see the doctors. There, we traveled on the Sunset Limited from that came from LA, stopped in Tucson and went to New Orleans. Then you had to catch another train going up to New York. But I remember we got to New Orleans and got off the train to change. I was thirsty, and I went to a water fountain there, turned it on and started a drink. And someone grabbed me by the back of my shirt and dragged me away and started yelling at me, and I didn't know what was wrong. And he started pointing. He said, can't you see the sign? Sign said, colored only. He said, white people can't. Can't drink at that fountain. And I said something like, that's silly. And he got really mad at me, and I was I think I was going to get in trouble, but my mother came and rescued me, and I asked her, Why is this? And she said, that's the way things are, and that's the way they were. But we didn't have any of that that I can remember in Tucson at the time. Well, by legal history, okay, I'll tell you about that. I ought to go back to the fact that was an accident. I went to law school at all. When I graduated Tucson high, I was first in the class, and I don't say that bragging, but I was first in the class. But nobody in my family ever thought that you could go to Harvard or Yale or anything like that. But they sent me to Los Angeles, to UCLA, which was a very good school at the time. So I went there for a year. I was went to UCLA for a year I was 18. I could not stay there for the second year because my mother got very ill, and I had to go back and help my father at the business and help take care of her. So I came back here as a sophomore and went to the U of A as a sophomore junior at. Day senior and I graduated. I was a history major, history and political science. I was going to be a history teacher, because history had always been I was always so interested in history and in political issues and things like that. But I don't know how it happened, or why it happened, except maybe the influence of Professor Houghton at the political science department. When I was a senior, I woke up one day standing in front of the admissions desk at the law school applying for admission at the U of A law school, and I had to pay tuition, which I think was $75 for the year, and got admitted to the law school. So I went, and I didn't have my I hadn't finished my undergraduate degree at the time, but you could get into law school without one, and I was eager to go, so off I went to law school. And I immediately was entranced. Is the right word by the law, I found it the most interesting thing. It was part history, part politics and part legal. So I went to law school for three years and graduated. And then came the story. I graduated. I'd gotten married, and in my senior year or junior, at the end of my junior year, I'd gotten married. My wife, Freda, was teaching schools, so I we had some money. She had graduated from the U of A as a Education Department, but I needed a job, so I wrote several law for there were the big law firms. Were all in Phoenix, but there were a few here. So I wrote the ones that were here and the ones in Phoenix, applying for work, sending my resume and so forth, and asking for an interview. Well, I couldn't get a job, not because my breath was bad when interviewed, but I couldn't get an interview. And I guess the name Feldman scared them off. Okay, so I that was my senior year. I was writing that stuff up in the last semester. So anyhow, I graduated first in the class. I still couldn't get an interview, so I finished up the semester that way last semester in my senior year. But two things happen. The dean came to me, Well, I ought to go back and tell you I had trouble in law school with one teacher. Every Jewish student had trouble with him. He told me at one time that I wasn't cut out to be a lawyer and I should go to some other profession or job. And I said to him, Mr. So and So, I said, that's funny. I've gotten all A's in every other course, but this one, and you keep you gave me a C, and I thought I did really well. And he proceeded to tell me I just didn't understand the law and legal things. So that was, you know. But anyhow, the Dean came to me in my last few weeks in my senior year, and he said, you know, Justice Douglas from the US Supreme Court always hires a clerk from the Western schools, Washington, Oregon, California and Arizona. And every year, the faculty of our school gives them a candidate, and since you are our best student with the highest grades, he said, You're we're going to endorse you as your candidate for for justice Douglas's clerkship. Now, a clerkship in the US Supreme Court is sort of a path to stardom, riches and fame. Okay? So I was excited. I studied day and night all the Supreme Court cases. Took a plane to Los Angeles to transfer to a plane to Oakland, where the interview one of by one of, I think his name was Robbins, one of justice Douglas's former law clerks of. Was going to interview me. The plane was late because of fog, and we went to Burbank to get another different flight, and fog got there anyhow. I got to instead of landing in Oakland, I landed in San Francisco about nine o'clock in the morning. My interview was at 12, so I rushed to get a hotel room, took a shower, changed clothes, got a ride, and got to the Mr. Robin's office at noon, and was told he's running late. Didn't bother me. I just sat there reading more Supreme Court case. I got in it. I was ready. Asked me anything about any case in the US Supreme Court, and I was ready. I got in and Robbins introduced himself, and we made a few minutes small talk. And then he started the interview by asking me, What do you think of justice? Frankfurter, I had no idea what in the world I should say to that. It turned out, as I learned later, Justice Douglas and Justice Frankfurter were bitter enemies. Justice Douglas wanted people who didn't like frankfurter's jurisprudence. So I didn't get the job. Okay? I came back and I couldn't get an interview at any law firm. So a great thing happened to me. I had to open up an office of my own with about five other people with no jobs in a little hole in the wall on court and Washington Street, there were 123456, lawyers, one, secretary and an office of the US magistrate. In this windowless place, it only had a window in the reception room in front. So I had a little office there. I borrowed some money from the southern Arizona bank because so I could buy a desk and a chair and so forth. And I was in business such as it was okay at that time, they had no public defenders, so you could go to court and get appointed for a case to represent a guy who couldn't a defendant who couldn't afford his own lawyer, and you didn't get paid. You were volunteers for it, but you could sort of get to be known, and you get known in the community a little. And so people would wander in once in a while, and you would do what you could could for them. But the wonderful thing that happened is across the street from this little hole in the wall on court and on the corner of court in Washington, two brothers opened up a law firm. They had been in the Valley Bank building, and they moved to that place, and their names were Morris and Stuart Udall, and I got to meet them, and then I got to help Morris, who was a wonderful trial lawyer. I got to help Morris with cases and so forth, and learned how to practice law from watching him. And that sort of was the way I got started in the practice of law. Really got started in the practice of law, and I also did some of this volunteer work on criminal cases. And Judge Walsh, who was a great trial judge, and federal trial judge liked me a lot from the work I did in his courtroom, and he'd appoint me to really interesting cases. So I got, got to do that, and judge Malloy down here would give me a hard time by giving me some impossible cases, but I guess he liked my work, so I began to make a name of myself, and that's how I started in the practice of law, and then formed a little law firm with Will, Scott and Chuck Whitehill. We started out in the hole in the wall, then we moved to this new office building that was built on the corner of Church Street and Alameda. It's still there, I think. What eight, nine stories, something like that. We moved there, and we're practicing there for a few years, till we sort of separated. Then I stayed in that building and practiced Stanley G Feldman, Attorney at Law until 1968 which made another big turn in my life. Well, in 1960 68 a friend of mine who had gone to high school. With though he was two years at, Donald Pitt, who was in a who had there was Miller and Pitt. Donald came to me and said they would like me to join the firm, so it'd be Miller Pitt and Feldman. And we talked, and I said, Well, I'm not cut out anymore to be an employee. No, though he said, You be a full partner, but we'd like because I had established a little personal injury practice by the time, and Bob Miller, the person, was one of the premier personal injury lawyers in town, and so we sought Miller, Pitt and Feldman and I moved out of the building on church and Alameda and into a something called the Garden Plaza building in which also was on Alameda, but on stone. And we practiced there from 1968 and my practice, Miller's and my practice and Personal Injury stuff grew and grew so that we had cases all over Arizona, New Mexico cases, a Big case in Denver, Colorado, some stuff in LA. And we had a really thriving law practice. I was doing all sorts of work, mostly personal injury, but all sorts of trial work of different kinds of cases. And then Pitt comes to me one day. He did all business stuff, and he said, I have a great idea. I said, Yeah, Donald, what's that? He said we could form and start a pro basketball team. I said, we could. He said, Yes. I said, Where would we do this and how? He said, I got it all figured out. He had a little notebook of all figured out how. He said, we do it in Phoenix. I said, you're starting. You're telling me we're going to start a pro basketball team in Phoenix. He said, Yes. And to show you how smart I am, I said, That's the dumbest thing I ever heard him. He said, No, we're doing it. That was the start of the Phoenix Suns. Okay, so for several years, I was Phoenix Suns lawyer on all sorts of courtroom cases. The most interesting thing, most interesting, interesting kind of litigation you can have in lab and I represented the sons in the litigation between the merger of the two the National Basketball Association and the American Basketball Association. I had all sorts of litigation with other teams, because there was a start of the players trying to assert themselves, to get free agency, and trying to shop around. And that's a long story, but I won't get into so I did that for a while, and we continued with the personal injury firm, and then we got into politics. I got into politics a little, not running for anything, but helping some people. And I had met a guy named Bruce Babbitt who was practicing law in Phoenix, and who ran for Attorney General, and had helped him with his campaign here and so forth, and so he became Attorney General. Meanwhile, I should tell you something about the other people. Am I too disjointed here? I had met all sorts of other people through the law practice, including rose Silver, who eventually became county attorney, the first woman county attorney here, the Udall brothers, as I said, and was friends with them. I had met Babbitt and who was attorney general became Attorney General. Bruce Babbitt called me up one day and said he'd like to come down talk to me and Donald Pitt and a couple of other people who had helped him in his campaign for attorney general, about running for governor. The background of that is that Raul Castro, whom I got to know because he was a superior court judge down here, and I tried a couple of cases in his courtroom. Raul Castro had been elected Governor of the state of Arizona, the first Mexican American. American to serve in that capacity, and had served as governor, and then had been appointed, I guess, by Jimmy Carter, but I'm not sure, Ambassador to, I think, Argentina, and so he had vacated the office of governor to become an ambassador, and that under the Arizona Constitution that made the Secretary of State, whose name, I think was Jack Williams, Governor, successor, successor, all right. And so Williams took office. Castro left, Williams took office, and Babbitt now was thinking of running against Williams in the next election. So he came down, we had dinner at what was then known as the San Diego house across the street, and we our advice to Babbitt is, don't, don't run for governor. Run for Senate, because I think if Deconcini was going to not run again, and there'd be a vacancy, I think it was Deacon seen. Run for Senate, you'd be a shoe in he'll be elected Senate, and be much better for you and for the country to have someone like you as senator. Babbitt, in my view, a Democrat, was a wonderful governor, did a lot for Arizona, so that was our advice. And finally, about 10 o'clock, Bruce Babbitt said, You're right. I won't run for governor. I will run for the Senate. I said, Bruce, you've had a drink, you've had dinner. It's fairly late. Why don't you stay over? We have a spare bedroom, and you can go back tomorrow morning. He said, No, I feel fine. I'll drive back to Phoenix. So he left for Phoenix that evening and became governor when he got to Casa Grande, because Jack Williams had a heart attack and died, and the next in line was the attorney general. So that's how Bruce Babbitt became governor of Arizona, all right, and that's how I got appointed to the Supreme Court, because he knew I was interested in it, and he asked me to apply, which sort of was an indication, if you apply, you will, I'll appoint you. So I applied. By then we had had the, had the Morris Udalls amendment to the Arizona Constitution, merit selection. So in order to get your name in front of the governor, you had to go through the interview by the appellate court nominating commission. This is all part of the merit selection program, which I was president of a state bar in the 70s, and I helped get the merit selection three state bar presidents, Dick Siegel, Bill browning and myself, in successive years, helped get the merit selection adopted in Arizona. It was quite controversial at the time. So now, coming back to 1982 I was interviewed by the Commission on Appellate Court appointments, and it was a very controversial thing, because there was a a person on the commission who came from the from the Chandler law firm, and with whom I against whom I had tried a number of cases. And he and I were very he was very hostile toward me. Let's just put it that way. And I had known the Chandler firm. I had tried a lot of cases against him, Tom Chandler. I knew him well. He was a friend. He and I did some cases together. He referred me some cases. He but this guy and I did not get along with this other fellow, and he was on the Appellate Court nominee commission. So I sat down. They called me in for the interview. I sat down. The Chief Justice was in one place. I was next. The fellow we'll call Bob, was right on my left. And then there were six or seven other people around, and Bob had the first question, which was, I can remember an exact quote almost Stanley. He said, I've told the commission that you're a liar and a cheater and an unethical lawyer. What's your response? So I sat there for a minute and I thought, and I said, you know, Bob, given our background, I would like to think that if the conditions were reversed and I was sitting in your chair and you and mine, I would have recused myself on the grounds of prejudice. And I think he said, that's a pretty good answer. Anyhow, I went on and said, but if the commission has questions about me, they ought to call your partner, Tom Chandler, who is the preeminent lawyer in Tucson and ask him what he thinks. And he ought to call your other partner, Burr Udall, who I've tried cases against, and ask him what he thinks. And the commission did call them. So anyhow, my name got to the governor, and the Commission fixed it. So Babbitt, the Commission decided they wanted me. I guess they fixed it, because they sent three names, two Republicans and me and Babbitt, of course, was a good Democrat. This was his first appointment to the court. So I got appointed in 1982 and I got Babbitt interviewed me before the appointment. And it was an interesting thing, because he proceeded to talk to me about how his idea of how Supreme Court justice should work, you know, his philosophy, which was essentially to get out of the governor's way when the governor had a program not to make waves, okay? And he went on for about 510, minutes that way, and I just sat there with my hands like this, and smiled, and he looked at me and he said, You're not agreeing with any of this. Are you? I said, No. I said, Governor, I'll do it my way, not your way if you appoint me? And he looked at me and he smiled, and he said, Who's going to win the World Series? And I said, the Dodgers. I think it was the Dodgers. And anyhow, that's, that's the way I got appointed to the Supreme Court. I was what they now would call an activist. I mean, a lot needed to get done because the court was stuck in the you know, had not changed any at all, or very little. And it had done some really good things before I got there. It had given women, it had given reproductive rights a and I was the lawyer for Planned Parenthood way back then in the 70 we won that case and got an injunction from the trial court against pro against enforcement of the Arizona law that prohibited abortions, and it had recognized Native Americans right to Vote. It had recognized that segregation violated the 14th Amendment and so forth. So it was fairly progressive compared to other states, but its procedure was old and so forth. So one of the things I accomplished on the court was to rewrite the rules as to how you it handled appeals. And I don't want to get into the technical aspects, but I think it improved the system a great deal. Another thing which I think I accomplished came sort of by incident, by accident. I was sitting there on the first day of oral arguments, and the court, and I had told myself, look, it's going to be your first day of oral arguments. Don't make waves. But somebody, I was all prepared. I was always all prepared for somebody in the argument cited a case for such and such a principle, and I had read the case, so I looked up and I said, I'm sorry, counsel, but I've read that case. It doesn't stand for that at all. And he looked there was dead silence in the courtroom. I mean, they didn't do things like that, but I think I sort of established it. A reputation for how you came about, how prepared and careful you had to be when you wrote things for the court and argued in front of the court. The Chief Justice said in one we had weekly meetings, the Chief Justice said that there's a vacancy on one of the important committees the Supreme Court, and we need to appoint a person to it. They said, I think we should appoint and I don't remember the name, repoint, appoint X. I said, I'm sorry, Chief Justice, but I don't know this. Who is this person? And he said, Oh, it's a good guy. We go for lunch couple of times a month. And I said, Well, you know, I don't think that's a way that we ought to appoint people to these important committees. The committee work is important, status for being on a committee and opportunity is important. They said, Well, how do you want to do it? I said, Well, I think you ought to. We ought to put a notice in the bar journal that there's a vacancy in such and such a committee. And applications will be taken on certain dates. And then we ought to look at the applications, and we ought to make it clear anybody can apply, regardless of sex, regardless of color, regardless of ethnicity, and we will appoint the person we adjudged to be the best, so that we established that system, and that's the way it still works. I sort of brought a sense of reality and a wide experience to the court so and as I said, I was very well prepared as to which cases we'd take and which cases we'd hear. So I think one of the most important was it's called wagon cellar versus somebody, which established the right of a person, a woman, women who had been compelled by their boss to do some sexually explicit in this case, to to take down her dress and Moon Moon The boss to recover damages for for harassment, sexual harassment, even though she'd not been physically attacked or anything. But this was a joke of that they would make people do. And the case established the right to recover damages for being sexually harassed. And then the case that established the right of people who had been treated badly with in bad faith with their insurance companies, to sue for damages, aside from the actual loss of the building or whatever, to sue for damages for bad faith extra, called extra contractual damages. Those were two of the cases school financing. While I was Chief Justice, we decided the case that said that under the Arizona Constitution, which said that the state had to provide a system of uniform and general education, that the legislature had to fund all school districts in such a manner As to equalize them, because some school districts with had high property tax had much better schools than some that didn't. For instance, part of the evidence in the case was at St John's, which had a very little town that had a magnificent High School. Every kid had a computer. They had a theater that was close to what the temple of the some little town had a domed high school football scene, not not glass, but they put a plastic dome over it because they had a coal fired generating, electric generating plant. So they had a lot of tax money there. The electricity was sold to LA and so forth. But in Cochise County in Douglas at the same time, the kids didn't have books. No air conditioning. Windows wouldn't open. The kids didn't have books to take home to study. They had a share of books in school. So the case required the legislature to make up the difference in tax base. That case, incidentally, is still alive, because despite our decision, the legislature. Has never fully compared complied with it. It has to do with facilities. So So those are three of the important cases. There are a lot more, but that go on for hours. Well, among the people I got to know was John McCain. I didn't know him very well, but I had met him, and while I disagreed with him on a lot of things, I had a great deal of respect for him, both because I of his war record and because I thought he was a true patriot. And so any the day John John McCain saved me, is the way I put it. I was on the while I was Chief Justice, I was on the board of the Council of Chief Justices of the United States. There were 50 of us, or 5148 states, Puerto Rico, Guam and somebody, they were either 50 or 51 anyhow, I was on the board. And even though they considered me a radical, I was the one who was delegated to do some, some of the interesting things that, for one thing, there was a bill in Congress to require state supreme courts to in deciding cases with federal questions, to adopt decisions on the question that had been made by the Circuit Court of Appeals in the circuit in which that state, which contained that state and that had never been the law, the bill would make it, make it the law. And so I was asked by the board to go to the hearing before, I think it was a commerce committee, but I'm not sure of the Senate which was going to hear, have a hearing on the bill, and state the opposition of the Conference of Chief Justices, which usually was never got involved in any political thing about this sort of infringed on their territory. And so I was told to go and argue against it. So when my turn to speak got came, I got up and started to speak, and got interrupted by the chair who was, I think Senator it was Senator Cole from Wisconsin, Kohler products, Cole, Senator Cole, who said, Mr. Chief Justice, he said, I don't know why you people are opposed to this, my bill, or the bill. He said, Because it's always been the law. And I said, I'm sorry, I can't agree with you, Mr. Chairman, it's not the law. Has never been the law. He said, Well, we'll see about that. And he took a recess for five minutes, came back and said, I checked with my staff, and they say it is the law and has always been. And I said, I'm sorry to argue with your staff, Mr. Chairman. But at that point, the door opened and back, and Senator McCain, who was a member of the committee, came in, and I guess someone had told him I was having a hard time. He came in, because the committee members come and go, not they're not all there. But he came in, he looked at the chairman, Senator Cole, then he looked at me, and He waved his hand and said, Hi, Stanley. How you doing? He just gave a message to Cole not to give me such a hard time. So things went a little better after that. That's how John McCain saved me. And then I still remember I was asked to go by the Conference of chief justices to the business round table convention every because they wanted to show that they were, you know, their ears were open. I didn't want to go, but I did, and I got to put aside, or by some guy who started to berate me on the discovery of documents from business firms and how the courts were ruining and destroying businesses by allowing this to happen. I listened for about two minutes and excused myself and I said, But I'm sorry I didn't get your name and who you were, what company you're with. He gave me his name and he said, and I'm the Senior Vice President for litigation of Phil Morrison companies. Okay, so that was that. And, well, tell. My Goldwater story I had, I had met Senator Goldwater just for a minute or two. I don't even remember one after some talk he made at the U of A but while I was Chief Justice the legislature and the governor, Governor Symington, decided they wanted to change the juvenile justice system so that all juveniles accused of what would have been a felony would be treated as adults, have to go to adult court instead of juvenile court. This, of course, was a radical change in one which all the judges in the state were practically all of them, all the juvenile judges certainly thought would be a terrible thing. So the Administrative Director of the Courts made an appointment for me to see Senator Goldwater, who had retired. So we went to his house, and he he had remarried a rather liberal person, and we told him the problem. And he said, That's nonsense. He said, can't do that. So we were able to use his name to fight it. It got through the legislature, but it never, never got enforced or really did anything. But I almost had a physical fight over because before, when we had asked for a meeting with the governor to try and dissuade him from doing this,","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://arizona.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3195/collection_resources/144302/file/266743#t=6.0,60.999"},{"id":"https://arizona.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3195/collection_resources/144302/file/266743/transcript/77067/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"UNKNOWN SPEAKER  1:0: and this was in the height, In the height of the war against crime politics. And so this was going to be a very popular bill in the state of Arizona, and we went to talk to the governor","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://arizona.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3195/collection_resources/144302/file/266743#t=61.0,61.999"},{"id":"https://arizona.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3195/collection_resources/144302/file/266743/transcript/77067/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"00:12:01.000 --\u003e 00:12:03.000","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://arizona.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3195/collection_resources/144302/file/266743#t=62.0,720.999"}]},{"id":"https://arizona.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3195/collection_resources/144302/file/266743/transcript/77067","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["English [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://arizona.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3195/collection_resources/144302/file/266743/transcript/77067/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"subtitling","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/file_transcripts/associated_files/000/077/067/original/azu_ms839-002_a.vtt?1741631662","format":"text/vtt","language":"en"},"target":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/file_transcripts/associated_files/000/077/067/original/azu_ms839-002_a.vtt?1741631662"}]}]}]}