Luis Rodriguez BS ‘89, J.D. ‘92
Throughout his time as a public defender, Luis Rodriguez BS ‘89, J.D. ‘92 has made one thing very clear to everyone. “I don’t like calling our clients defendants, just so you know,” he says. “We just like to call them ‘justice-involved youth’ instead.”
Rodriguez—an alumnus of Santa Clara Law and a first-generation student—has a storied history of representing such justice-involved youth in courts of law with equal zeal. During his time on the Santa Clara campus, Rodriguez gained a sense of belonging and purpose from his first exposure to the Jesuit theology and ideology of social justice: “I felt I needed to do more for myself and for my community,” Rodriguez explained. He drew from the strong first-generation community that he discovered at the law school and acknowledges that academic support was there for him as well as student organizations that were in place to help through the other key moments in law school.
Acting on that drive, Rodriguez became a public defender. Early on in his career, he noticed that attorneys would always ask him the same question. Posing the most extreme hypothetical to Rodriguez, they would unfailingly follow up with: “How could you defend those people?”
“This questioning allowed me to take a look inside and ask, ‘Why do I really believe in this?’” Rodriguez explained. “I found that I believe in democracy. I get to question the government and the accusations they bring before folks; I’m not here to act in judgment of these folks, but rather to defend them from whatever accusations the government makes.”
Rodriguez has acted on this belief throughout his thirty-storied years in the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office. Among the work he values the most is his work representing youths entangled in the criminal justice system. “A lot of these justice-involved youth start in a very bad spot,” Rodriguez explained. “A majority of them have broken homes, mental health issues, cognitive delays; they come into this world with those heavy weights on them. It’s a reminder to me and the attorneys I supervise that we cannot forget—first of all—that these are children, and that, second of all, they may not have started where everyone else started.”
As the years passed, Rodriguez’s dedication to defending justice-involved youth continued throughout his higher and higher-level leadership roles. In 2013, Rodriguez was sworn in as the first Latino president of the State Bar of California. Upon his inauguration, he also became the very first public defender to hold the position.
“For me, it was a great complement,” Rodriguez commented. “When I first entered the mainstream state organization, there were certain misbeliefs about what public defenders were. I was the only government employee on the board of trustees at that time; all the rest were [in the] private sector.” Rodriguez also emphasizes that he wasn’t overly special among his peers. “By many, I was seen as an exception to what a child of immigrants could attain, rather I was an example of what good can happen when given an opportunity”
What does the future hold for Luis Rodriguez? For starters, he aims to carry forward his unwavering drive and sense of purpose.
“What keeps me going?” he chuckled. “When I can no longer say to myself, ‘Am I doing something better? Am I adding to the positivity of someone’s life?’ When I stop thinking that way, it’ll be time for me to retire.”