Kennedy Inn of Court Reflections by Judge Consuelo M. Callahan

My name is Mrs. Walla Maria Callahan, also known as Cunning Callahan, and I am a circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Night Circuit. Well, I say I'm from Stockton because it's the longest place I've ever lived, but I actually was born in the Bay Area, but I took my first job out of law school at the City Attorney's Office, and when I graduated from law school, it was a very different time. There were less than 10 women in my class, and I was very concerned about whether I was going to actually be able to get a job. So I actually took the first job that someone offered to me, and it was one of my classmates. His friend was City Attorney in Stockton, and his friend had a wife that had gone to Stanford. I did my undergraduate at Stanford, and she wanted her husband to hire a woman. So I seemed to, on a couple of levels, meet Bill, and he hired me, but I really knew that was not the job I wanted. I wanted to be a trial lawyer. I never thought about working for a judge or a carcane, which was kind of a mistake in my career, I think, but I just wanted to be in the courtroom. Why would I want to help a judge when I could do it myself? And I had worked for the Public Defender's Office when I was in law school, but this summer and during the year. So I've directly applied to the PD and the DA, and the DA offered me a job of the day before the Public Defender. And so I think I would have taken the Public Defender if I had had a choice, but I think it was a better choice for me to be a DA, and then I was a prosecutor for 10 and a half years, lived in a courtroom, did 70 jury trials, tried cases back-to-back, did, began that child to be a sexual assault entered in the DA's office in San Joaquin County, did a head and up the career criminal and also did capital cases. And so I was the first woman to be appointed and the first Latina to the San Joaquin County Superior Court, which was in the early 90s, so it's sort of surprising. Stockton was a bit provincial, and so I had a lot of firsts in my career, and there were a lot of times I was the only woman in the room when I was doing trials, and then when I was on the Superior Court, and then when I was appointed to the third DCA, I was only one of 10 justices. I always said they'd have one of us. I took Janice Brown's spot, you know, they would have one woman whether they needed one or not. So I spent six and a half years there, and then when the federal court came knocking, I went to there and I've just completed 20 years on the federal court. Well, I got involved in the end of court, probably like many of the people in the end of court. Justice Art Scotland was my presiding justice when I joined the third DCA, and he came down to my chambers to welcome me. We had been law school classmates, so we knew a bit of each other, but we had gone separate ways. I lived in Stockton. He was in Sacramento. Welcome me to the court, and about two seconds later, he said, you need to join the end of court. And I go, oh, I wasn't familiar with the end movement. And I said, well, that sounds wonderful. And that was the beginning, and then pretty much I knew I was on the ex-com, and the next thing I knew I was the president of the end, and the rest is somewhat history. I've had a very long relationship since probably it would be like the end of 1996 to the president that I have remained very involved with the ends, and it's been one of the most rewarding components of my professional and personal lives. We had a skit, and I was wearing my robe in the skit, and then I jumped up, pealed the robe off on the bench that we had, and did a little tat ditty for them, and it was wearing this red sequence outfit, and people were just a gassed. And so that one has followed me, but it was fun. I like the surprise of it, and I think that I like that people, they can think you're a certain way, but you're always so much more. And I think that makes people identify more with you. That was one, I can remember comments that people, I remember one of a team that I led that I think we got, I think we got third in the nation. I was stressed about that. I didn't see why we didn't get first or second, but we, but I presented Judd at the time was Bapuya, and Bapuya was raising his hand, and they was trying to jump ahead of other people, you know, and figure out things kind of like, you know, since he was by presiding Judd, I would call him first, and he's just trying to get, and he said, you're not by presiding Judd here, I said that in that, and that I thought, oh boy, he shouldn't have said that. And I remember another time when one older in member, I could qualify as older as well, but made some very comment about traditional women, and women were more nurturing, and were more meant, you know, with children and all of that. And so you have a room of professional women in there, and there was like, ever, there was like a gas that came over the audience, but that was the thing that I liked. I don't know whether he made it provocatively. He could have very well believed it, but it, the way that the end works and with the moderation, and how we discussed stereotypes, we discussed difficult issues, and we discussed them openly. There truly is a free speech somewhere that it really, it, you know, those kind of provocative comments allow for further discussion and hearing other people's perspective, which I do think that that's really important for people to have a place to say what they think and feel that they can safely participate in the discussion, but I also think it means you a better lawyer. You know, being a good lawyer means you have, there's certain things you have to hear that you don't want to hear. You've got to hear both sides of it, and as lawyers, sometimes we just want to hear the side that reinforces our possession. So I think that the end is a really good place to be a free speech zone. The hammies, like many things in the Antonyham Kennedy Inn, go back to Art Scotland, and he decided that that would be a good way to recognize people's accomplishments and just for us to have fun and give a little bit of a, you know, kind of little fire in everyone's belly so that they can win one of these like super cheap little trophies. However, the acknowledgement of your peers that you've done a good job. And so we, we started that and he got me as a willing partner, and so we just decided and I never went to walk away from an opportunity to dress up in, you know, various, uh, formals, tiaras, art has tails, all of that. And so we just have a lot of fun doing it, and people seem to really enjoy, um, seeing other people could get awards, and they hoped they would get one of the coveted hammies. And then we always, but we always kept it was, it was a lot of fun, it was a lot of over the top, and it was different than any other inn. And we always had like the voice of conscience. We came back to our values and made sure that we recognized that, and the most coveted awards were always the people that really embodied what the in movement is all about. So it just, uh, it, people loved it, responded to it, and so we've kept it coming.