In 2010, a lawyer for Arizona argued for the state’s controversial immigration law SB 1070 in front of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  He opened with pointed criticism of the federal government and sarcasm for the district judge who’d issued an injunction against parts of the law. Finally, Judge Carlos T. Bea leaned toward his microphone and said firmly, “Let’s forget about what arguments you might address to a jury or a legislature” and urged him to focus on the four provisions the court had assembled to review.

“That captures Carlos Bea,” his colleague on the Ninth Circuit, Senior Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, says today. “That lawyer must have thought ‘If I lead with a political statement, I’ll get him on my side.’  He couldn’t have been more wrong.”

On a court with a liberal reputation, Bea, JD ’58 (BA ’56), is a conservative, appointed by President George W. Bush in 2003. A member of the Federalist Society and proponent of originalism in interpreting law, he nonetheless is known for pushing politics off the table when a case is before him.  “Judge Bea and I are very close friends who don’t often agree—on politics. But he’s a terrific lawyer and very careful about the law and facts,” Hawkins adds. Bea’s former clerk Ben Feuer, chairman of the California Appellate Law Group, agrees. “He approaches each case independently. He believes his job is to get it right, to go where the law leads.”

In 2019, Judge Bea, 85, announced he would move from full-time to senior status, which could reduce his work by about 50 percent. It will also give the current administration the opportunity to nominate his replacement. But in a time when politicians sometimes fiercely debate judicial appointments—and point to court decisions in campaign ads—the urbane and gracious judge does not seem to let partisan chatter bother him.

“Politics is not a subject of conversation among judges,” he says.  “Eighty-five to ninety percent of our decisions are unanimous, and there just isn’t a big difference in results between people coming from different parties.”   

Bea spent the first 30 years of his career practicing law in San Francisco, trying personal injury and construction dispute cases. In 1990 Bea became a superior court judge and enjoyed presiding over trials for 13 years. But as an appellate judge, he says, “I’m very interested in cases that deal with separation of powers between the three branches of government and also between trial courts and appellate courts. The American experiment in separation of power has been extremely successful.”

One of his most satisfying experiences, he says, was writing the majority opinion for the 2009 case of Hinkson v. USA. In it, the majority assigned to trial courts deference to determine the facts, and to appellate courts deference to state the law.  It has been cited nearly 600 times in other cases since then.

Judge Bea’s personal biography is as fascinating as his legal work is rigorous. Carlos Tiburcio Bea was born in San Sebastian, Spain, on the eve of World War II.  After the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, his widowed mother hastily packed up 5-year-old Carlos and his brother for a harrowing Atlantic Ocean crossing menaced by German U-boats to connect with family members in Cuba.  Later the Beas moved to California and the 6’4” Bea began playing basketball. He briefly returned to Cuba (he was a Cuban citizen) to play on its 1952 Olympic team in Helsinki.

Bea attended Stanford as an undergraduate and law student, playing basketball for three years. The Cardinal hoopsters had a good team, but former teammate Ronald “Hawk” Wagner, LLB ’59 (BA ’56), still jokes that he wished the lanky Bea had packed on a few more pounds to be a more formidable center. Intellectually, however, Bea is a heavyweight, says Wagner, who is retired from a family law practice in Walnut Creek. Bea’s legal writings, Wagner adds are “clear, concise, and precise.”

In one of his Ninth Circuit dissents criticizing race-based government actions, Judge Bea famously wrote, “The way to end racial discrimination is to stop discriminating by race.” That language was later repeated by Chief Justice John Robert’s U.S. Supreme Court opinion that reversed the Ninth Circuit decision—and largely agreed with Bea’s dissent.

“Politics is not a subject of conversation among judges. Eighty-five to ninety percent of our decisions are unanimous, and there just isn’t a big difference in results between people coming from different parties.”

—Judge Carlos T. Bea, JD ’58 (BA ’56)

Judge Bea and his wife Louise have four sons including Sebastian Bea, a rower who attended UC-Berkeley. Sebastian kept the family Olympic tradition alive and won a silver medal in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Observes Bea of his son: “Compared with him I was more like an Olympic tourist [his Cuban team won just two of seven games] but we had a lot of fun.” Sebastian, now an investment strategist, recalls that his father was “never very vocal about being an Olympian and he’s the opposite of a braggart.  But there is something about my father’s work ethic and determination that was motivating to me. It seemed to make any goal achievable.”

Bea’s Olympic sojourn and a year spent playing basketball in Spain landed him in some immigration difficulties when he returned to the U.S. to attend Stanford; immigration officers ruled he had abandoned his citizenship residency process and he was placed under an order of deportation, but granted a stay (voluntary departure) pending appeal. He won his appeal before the Board of Immigration Appeals and became a U.S. citizen in 1958. 

His own immigration experience might have seemed enough to attract him to the law, but that’s not why he became a lawyer, he says. Rather when Bea was 14, a lawyer working with his family told him that he enjoyed his work because “Every time the door opens and a client comes in, a new life comes in and you learn so much.” These days, about 25 percent of the Ninth Circuit’s cases involve immigration.  Bea admits, “I have a very soft spot in my heart for attorneys who represent immigrants. It’s procedurally complex and they don’t get paid very much.” He notes that Congress has a habit of passing legislation but rarely changing anything, leading to layer after layer of law. “Immigration is an area where Congress could make things a lot simpler for all of us,” he says.

What’s next? He may be cutting back but Judge Bea is not cutting out.  He may do some teaching at Stanford or Hastings. And his family still maintains the home where he was born in San Sebastian, where he hopes to spend more time. “With internet access,” he adds, “I can work quite easily from there.” Clearly, the law retains its appeal and interesting doors keep opening.