For Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar (MA ’96, PhD ’01), it felt like a homecoming. Twenty-five years earlier, he’d been a senior at Calexico High School, headed for Harvard University and a career in law. Now the new state Supreme Court justice was again in the Southern California desert, preparing to address 100 student participants in Indio High School’s law pathway program. Most of the teenagers in the audience, like Cuéllar, had roots in Mexico. Many hoped to be the first in their family to attend college.

It’s the type of thing that Cuéllar likes to do regularly these days, on top of his busy court schedule. “I enjoy the fact that this job gives me a chance to connect with young people,” the 43-year-old associate justice and Stanford visiting professor of law says with a smile. “There’s nothing better than being in a room where you can have a real conversation and see what’s on their minds, what makes them concerned about the future, and what gives them hope.”

Cuéllar’s obvious ease with students, and people in general, was a recurring theme at his confirmation hearing in August 2014. Before his nomination by California Governor Jerry Brown,  he had served in two Democratic presidential administrations, spent nearly 15 years as a full-time member of the Stanford Law faculty, and, more recently, was director of the Stanford University Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Today he is one of three Brown appointees serving on the state’s influential seven-member high court, adding political diversity to a bench that has been dominated for decades by Republican appointees. He’s also the only Latino currently serving as a California Supreme Court justice, in a state where Hispanics make up nearly 40 percent of the population. [Justice Carlos Moreno, JD ’75, now the U.S. Ambassador to Belize, served from 2001 to 2011.]

“I think institutions like this one benefit when people come from different backgrounds,” Cuéllar says, appearing relaxed in his oak-paneled chambers overlooking San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza. “State legal systems account for roughly 95 percent of all the legal disputes in America. They deal with family law, criminal justice, fraud, environmental regulation and health, civil disputes, small claims, and everything in between. This court system is a reflection of life. That appeals to me.”

“Tino Cuéllar’s experience, skill, wisdom, and compassion uniquely qualified him for the California Supreme Court,” says M. Elizabeth Magill, Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Dean at Stanford Law School, who attended the hearing.

“We were honored to call him a member of our faculty and are extremely proud of his service to the people of California on the bench.”

Cuéllar’s unusual journey to the high court began in the northern Mexican town of Matamoros, where he was born in 1972. Both of his parents were teachers who stressed the importance of education, and for many years “Tino” and his younger brother, Max, crossed the international border bridge on foot every day to attend Catholic schools in Brownsville, Texas.

Eventually, the family immigrated to the United States and settled in Calexico, the heart of Southern California’s agricultural Imperial Valley.

Struck by the contrasts he saw on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, between wealth and poverty, justice and corruption, Cuéllar developed an early interest in government and public policy. As a teenager he participated on his school’s mock trial team and read extensively outside of class, beefing up on subjects where he felt his coursework was lacking. That work ethic, plus a cheerful willingness, instilled by his parents, to embrace new experiences and ideas served him well when he crossed the country to attend Harvard University and Yale Law School.

Later, as a newly minted lawyer and U.S. citizen, Cuéllar felt a need to engage with the real world. So he took a job during the Clinton administration as senior advisor to the undersecretary at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The work, dealing with financial crimes and firearms regulation, provided the inspiration for his subsequent doctoral thesis in political science, which eventually led to an invitation to join the Stanford faculty. In addition to teaching courses on administrative law and legislation, he authored numerous scholarly publications on a broad range of subjects, from immigration, to public health law, to national security. For more than 10 years Cuéllar also served in leadership positions at the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

“I’ve often joked that there are clearly two or three of him out there, because there’s no other way to explain the number of things he gets done,” said former Dean Larry Kramer, now president of The Hewlett Foundation, at Cuéllar’s confirmation hearing.  “He knows how to argue, he knows how to listen, he routinely asks the best questions in any group setting or workshop, but always in a way that conveys genuine curiosity and a desire to help clarify, rather than win an argument. He has that rare quality of knowing how to argue and present a position without alienating others.”

Cuéllar’s persuasive skills proved especially useful in 2009-2010, when he was tapped to serve on President Barack Obama’s transition team for immigration issues, as well as the White House Domestic Policy Council. Although the work was exhausting, with weekly flights between Washington, D.C., and his family home in California, “it was a great opportunity to see how people, who may on the surface disagree profoundly, can find common ground,” he recalls. Among his priorities in the nation’s capital were the repeal of the Clinton-era “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on gays and lesbians in the U.S. armed forces; the passage of federal food safety reform; and the enactment of the Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced disparities between penalties for crimes involving crack cocaine and powder cocaine.

Now that Cuéllar is serving on the highest bench of the largest court system in the world, he is careful not to discuss in public any sensitive issues that may appear before him. Within his chambers, though, he revels in the give-and-take that accompanies hard questions of the law. A typical week will include numerous meetings between him and his personal staff of five lawyers and one assistant, plus “a lot of reading and writing,” he says. Wednesday mornings are devoted to weekly conferences where the justices make decisions about which filed petitions, among thousands, should be granted review. Oral arguments, which generally are held one week a month in San Francisco, Sacramento, or Los Angeles, “often crackle with intensity,” he adds.  “The whole process feels profound, because you get deeply enmeshed in it.”

During the 2014-2015 court year the state Supreme Court held oral arguments and filed opinions in 71 cases, of which 26 involved civil matters, 31 involved noncapital criminal matters, and 14 involved automatic appeals arising from judgments of death. One recent high-profile case concerned a 10-year-old boy who’d been convicted of homicide after waiving his Miranda rights. [All three of Brown’s appointees—Cuéllar, Goodwin Liu (BS ’91), and Leondra R. Kruger—voted to review, leaving them one short of the needed majority.] In another prominent case, Cuéllar wrote an opinion, joined by the other two Brown appointees as well as Republican appointee Kathryn Werdegar, ruling that a commonly used sentence enhancement was not warranted, because prosecutors did not offer sufficient proof that a certain group fit the legal definition of a “criminal street gang.”

Generally speaking, though, the state Supreme Court still is deciding most of its cases unanimously, or nearly so, observes Bob Egelko (BA ’68), a veteran legal affairs staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle and formerly the Associated Press. “There have been a few 4-3 splits, but virtually everything, including the dissents, has stayed low-key,” he says. “I strongly suspect Brown knew what he was getting when he chose [the latest justices]. He wasn’t looking for upsetters of any apple carts, but for thoughtful, moderately progressive justices who might shift the court’s center of gravity without shaking up the public.”

When he’s not reviewing cases, Cuéllar chairs the state’s Language Access Plan Implementation Task Force, a group that is working to make sure that Californians with limited English proficiency have access to interpreters, translated forms, and appropriate technology in the state court system. He’s also the busy father of two school-age children and husband to Lucy Koh, a U.S. district judge in San Jose who is known for handling many high-profile technology cases. “You could say it’s the family business,” Cuéllar says with a laugh. Watching Koh has given him an appreciation, he adds, “for the hard work and dedication that trial court judges bring to the job, as well as the complexity of the job.”

Back at Indio High School, social studies teacher Lisa Nava still marvels at the connection Cuéllar was able to forge with the teenagers there in just one day. As she noted in a recent email, “His level of education was impressive to the students and provided many of them with a goal for what can be achieved through hard work and dedication to academics.” Before long, the professor-turned-supreme-court-justice would be inside the classroom again. Cuéllar’s latest course, on statutes and administrative agencies, began at Stanford Law School in late March.  SL

Theresa Johnston is a freelance journalist and frequent contributor to Stanford Magazine and Stanford Lawyer.