Jesse W. Carter
Democratic
Candidate Biography:
Jesse Washington Carter
Born: December 18, 1888 in Trinity County, CA
Married: Tiny Elva Gish (in 1910), Jean Woodward (in 1952)
Child: Oliver J. Carter, Harlan Field, and Marian Rose Bui
Died: March 15, 1959
1918-1927: District Attorney, Shasta County
1927-1939: City Attorney, City of Mount Shasta
1939: Resigned from the State Senate on September 12.
1939-1959: Justice, California Supreme Court
- SUPREME COURT: Carter's appointment to the California Supreme Court led to a new interpretation of the State Constitution by the Supreme Court. When Carter was appointed to the Supreme Court by Governor Culbert L. Olson on July 15th, the Commission on Qualifications of Judicial Appointments declined to "investigate his qualifications because of the fact that he is a state senator, and, therefore, ineligible for the office of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court..." The dispute stemmed from a Section 19 in Article VI, which said that "No senator or member of assembly shall during the term for which he shall have been elected, hold or accept any office, trust or employment under this state, provided, that this provision shall not apply to any office filled by election by the people." The Supreme Court ordered the Commission on Qualifications to comply because judicial offices are elected offices.
- LONE DISSENTER: The Great Dissents of the “Lone Dissenter”; Justice Jesse W. Carter’s Twenty Tumultuous Years on the California Supreme Court, edited by David B. Oppenheimer and Allan Brotsky (2010). Of note is that Carter "famously refused to sign a loyalty oath as a member of the Court" and "wrote so many solo dissenting opinions that he was popularly known as “the lone dissenter.”
Source: California Blue Book (1946), (1961)
Source: "Justice Jesse W. Carter of State High Court Dies", Los Angeles Times (3/17/1959)
Source: "State Justice Carter's Funeral Set Tomorrow", Los Angeles Times (3/17/1959)