California high court appointee symbolizes the immigrant American Dream

Gov. Jerry Brown has named a Latino law professor at Stanford to the California Supreme Court, making history as he would also apparently become the first immigrant to serve on a high court in the U.S.

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Mariano-Florentino Cuellar may also offer hope to the thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children trying to find homes in the United States in the ongoing border crisis – and a warning that deporting an immigrant child’s mind could be a terrible thing to waste.

Cuellar’s nomination was immediately hailed in California as being an important message about these times.

Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles called Cuellar’s appointment “a statement to the rest of the nation as we go through this backlash against immigrants.”

The Democratic head of the California Senate, President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, said Cuellar was “an inspired choice … a timely reminder that our Golden State was forged by disparate immigrant communities who pushed frontiers and who, together, recognized a common strength in diversity.”

Born in Matamoros, Mexico, Cuellar as a boy in the late 1970 used to cross the border on foot to attend school in Texas.

Eventually, he went on to score a rarity — and possibly one of the few Hispanics to do so — of earning degrees from Harvard, Yale and Stanford.

Cuellar also developed a deeply personal understanding of what the U.S.-Mexican border means in America life.

“The government had the power to establish legal rules about matters such as immigration and public safety, but the border was porous, making it difficult to reconcile theory and practice,” he once told The Stanford Lawyer, an in-house publication of the law school at the university.

“I learned the world is complicated and messy, and people’s lives are affected not only by how law is written but how it’s enforced.”

Cuellar served on the Obama-Biden transition team on immigration policy in 2008, and most recently has co-chaired the National Equity and Excellence Commission, mandated by Congress to find ways to close the achievement gap in public schools.

“Tino Cuellar is a renowned scholar who has … made significant contributions to both political science and the law,” Brown said in nominating Cuellar. “His vast knowledge and even temperament will — without question — add further luster to our highest court.”

Cuellar is expected to have smooth sailing in getting confirmation in traditionally Democratic California.

“I am enormously honored by Gov. Browns nomination and, if confirmed, I look forward to serving the people of California on our state’s highest court,” he said after his appointment.

His nomination has to be confirmed by the California State Bar Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation and then it will appear on the Nov. 4 ballot for approval by the voters.

Cuellar is married to U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh of the Northern District of California. They have two children.

In the second Clinton administration, Cuellar served as senior adviser to the Under Secretary at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, handling financial crime regulatory issues.

Then, but even more so now, Cuellar has served as a symbol of fulfilling the proverbial immigrant American Dream.

It was a far cry from the days he would walk seven miles across the border from Mexico to attend a parochial school in Brownsville, Tex. When he was 14, he moved with his family to Imperial County, California. He would go on to earn a bachelor’s degree at Harvard College, a juris doctor degree from Yale Law School and a doctorate in political science from Stanford.

At each step, Cuellar has won his colleagues’ admiration as a “people person.”

“Tino is is very exuberant,” says Stanford law professor Jenny Martinez .“He is very outgoing. He loves to talk about the law and ideas. He is just a very sort of gregarious, nice person.

“He is interested in everything from the treatment of refugees to food safety in the U.S. to criminal law.”

In nominating Cuellar, Brown said that “it is vital that the state’s highest court reflect the full diversity of its residents.”

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