Carlos Moreno, Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court, is a native Angeleno. A judge for the last 23 years, Moreno has lived his entire life in Los Angeles, and, instead of living near the court in San Francisco, keeps his residence in his home city. Read more about him below.
Q. What music have you listened to today?
A. My favorite music is any opera by Puccini, but lately I’ve been listening to contemporary Spanish opera that my son made a copy of for me. I haven’t listened to it today, though, because I’ve been in court all morning.
Q. What is your favorite word?
A. At the moment, a word in Spanish, deliquioso, that means intoxicating in a very fine way.
Q. When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A. I certainly remember wanting to be a physicist, a fireman, typical for a young boy, or a baseball player.
Q. What is your favorite cocktail?
A. Shrimp cocktail. Or ceviche.
Q. What is the best advice you have ever received?
A. To be myself, persist, and study hard, and above all to enjoy whatever I’m doing.
Q. What is your favorite thing about Los Angeles?
A. It’s really just a sense of belonging. I feel very much at home no matter where I am in Los Angeles. I like the many cultural venues that it has, the restaurants, little out of the way places. I like the diversity of people and views that you find in Los Angeles. And because I’ve lived here all of my life I’ve never had the problem that many people have of getting to know the city. I’m sure there are many parts of the city I don’t know, particularly parts that are currently involved in a resurgence with young people, but I think above all I feel a real sense of belonging and that to me is very important. I don’t think I could feel that way about any other city in the world.
Q. What was the last thing that inspired you?
A. A poem that I reread yesterday, that I had first read some time ago, about entering a sweet garden of life.
Q. What profession would you like to practice in your next life?
A. Architect. That goes with my love of art, my interest in how people relate in and out of spaces, the aspect of light that shines either inside or outside a given environment, and a certain comfort level that I think people feel when they see good architecture.
Q. What is your fondest childhood memory?
A. Probably just playing in the hills of Elysian Park, either riding my bicycle or riding a skate-type scooter on the streets there in the neighborhood, or building and riding little hot rods that my friends and brothers would make it seems like every year.
Q. What is your most prized material possession?
A. I don’t know if I would call anything a prized material possession, but I am very fond of my bicycle. It’s something that I use almost every day, it’s good for me, I’m good for it, it gets me outdoors. It’s the only thing I can think of that I consider mine as opposed to my family’s.
Q. If you could be anyone in history, who would you be?
A. Besides myself? I’m very happy with who I am. This may seem a bit odd. My mother passed away about almost 30 years ago, but many times I imagine what it must have been like to be my mother at age 16, when she came to Los Angeles. She had really wonderful stories about Los Angeles in the 1920s, friends that she had, activities, the evolution that Los Angeles was experiencing then in terms of its immigrant population. So I’ve never thought of a historical figure or anything, but I think I would have been my mother, or been in her shoes, during that time in Los Angeles.
Q. Who is the one person living or dead you would most like to meet for a drink?
A. Someone I’ve always admired is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I know he was an iconic figure in my family, along with President Kennedy, but my earliest memories are of my mother and uncle speaking about him having basically saved the country through the Great Depression and the war. I think I would have found it very interesting to meet him and to see how he approached solving these enormous problems in a very difficult time in American history.
To read about Justice Moreno’s interview at Zócalo, click here.
*Photo by Aaron Salcido.