This timeline shares milestones involving cases impacting Asian American and Pacific Islander history in California, as well as select Asian American Pacific Islander jurists throughout California judicial branch history.
The California Supreme Court ruled that the testimony of a Chinese man who witnessed a murder by a White man was inadmissible in a court of law.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was a federal law passed by Congress and signed by President Chester A. Arthur to restrict immigration to the United States by Chinese laborers for ten years.
"The plaintiff in error, Yick Wo, on August 24, 1885, petitioned the supreme court of California for the writ of habeas corpus, alleging that he was illegally deprived of his personal [118 U.S. 356, 357] liberty by the defendant as sheriff of the city and county of San Francisco."
A federal law restricted immigration from South and Southeast Asia.
A new immigration law was even more restrictive on those coming from Asian countries.
A case involving a Filipino man and a White woman debated the notion of race and interracial marriages.
This civil rights case determined whether or not Japanese-Americans could be held in internment camps during World War II.
A Filipino man challenged the Alien Land Act for the right to own land.
John Aiso served as a superior court commissioner for a year before being appointed to the Los Angeles Municipal Court in 1953.
Justice Stephen K. Tamura is the first Asian-American person to serve on an appellate court bench in the continental United States.
