Bio
Justice Stewart was appointed to the First Appellate District in June 2014 by Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr. as an Associate Justice in Division Two.
Justice Stewart currently serves on the Center for Judicial Education and Research Committee on Appellate Practice Curriculum and the Editorial Board of California Litigation, the Journal of the Litigation Section of the California Lawyers Association and in an advisory role to the American Bar Association, Litigation Section’s Judicial Intern Opportunity Program. With Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Joshua Wayser, Justice Stewart also serves as Co-Chair of the LGBT Bench Officers Committee of the California Judges Association.
Justice Stewart has been a panelist and speaker on programs sponsored by the Academy of Appellate Lawyers, the Rutter Group, the California Judges Association, the American Bar Association’s Litigation Section, California Women Lawyers, the Bar Associations of San Francisco, Alameda County and Santa Clara County, the Northern District Historical Society and many other organizations.
Before joining the Court, Justice Stewart served for 12 years as the Chief Deputy City Attorney for the City and County of San Francisco where she oversaw the City’s diverse civil litigation practice. In that capacity, she managed, under the City Attorney, a law office of about 300 employees, including about 200 attorneys. During her tenure as Chief Deputy, she also litigated several groundbreaking cases concerning marriage equality on behalf of San Francisco, including Lockyer v. CCSF (mayor’s power to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples), In re Marriage Cases (unconstitutionality of state law exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage), Strauss v. Horton (challenge to Proposition 8 under state constitutional provisions pertaining to ballot measures) and Perry v. Brown (federal constitutional challenge to Proposition 8).
Justice Stewart began her career as an associate at the San Francisco law firm of Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin, where she litigated a wide range of business cases at the trial and appellate level. She spent the first 20 years of her career at Howard, Rice, becoming a partner in 1988.
Over her years in practice, she served on the Board and as the first openly LGBT President of the Bar Association of San Francisco, co-founding the Bar’s School-To-College program, which mentors San Francisco youth with the goal of enabling them to obtain a college education. She also served on the Boards of Directors of the Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center (now Legal Aid at Work), Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom, Lesbian Rights Project (now National Center for Lesbian Rights) and as an inaugural member of the American Bar Association’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Commission, the Historical Society of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the Northern District’s Delegation to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference, the ABA House of Delegates and various Bar Association of San Francisco and California State Bar Committees. From 2007 through 2009, she served on the Public Information and Education Task Force of the Judicial Council’s Commission on Impartial Courts.
Justice Stewart has received many awards, including the American Bar Association’s Margaret Brent Award in 2013, the California Lawyer California Lawyer of the Year (CLAY) award in 2009, the Legal Aid Society’s Mathew O. Tobriner Award in 2010 and the LGBT Bar Association’s Dan Bradley award in 2008. She has also been recognized in public media for her work, including in 2010 by the Daily Journal as a Lawyer of the Decade in 2010. She is featured in the film “Balancing the Scales” about the challenges facing women in the legal profession.
Justice Stewart received her B.A. with distinction from Cornell University in 1978 and graduated Order of the Coif from Boalt Hall, U.C. Berkeley School of Law in 1981. She clerked for Judge Phyllis A. Kravitch on the Eleventh Circuit from 1981 to 1982. Justice Stewart is a third generation San Franciscan and lives with her wife Carole Scagnetti in San Francisco. They have a daughter who is a public and media relations professional. Their current canine companion is a Jack Russell Terrier-Chihuahua mix.
Education
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University of California, Berkeley
J.D., Order of the Coif 1981 -
Cornell University
B.A. with distinction 1978