Bob Egelko has this story in the SF Chron on UC Berkeley law prof. Stephen Barnett, who died October 13:

A political moderate, he became a vehement critic of liberal Chief Justice Rose Bird, who was voted out of office in 1986 along with Justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin after a campaign that focused on their votes to overturn death sentences. Professor Barnett said he objected to Bird not because of her ideology, but because, in his view, she let her personal and political opinions influence her judicial decisions.

It was a courageous stance for an academic at a time when the forces of Political Correctness were lionizing Bird and demonizing anyone who dared to criticize her.

Egelko is being cautious, and perhaps overly so, with the hedge words "in his view." It is close to impossible for any objective person to read Bird's opinions and come to any other conclusion. Yet many people did assert the opposite conclusion, with all the vigor of those who praised the emperor's clothes in the fable. Barnett called a spade a spade.