A Judge in the Making
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Pelayo A. Llamas poses in front of the Leyte Landing mural at the Washington, D.C. Philippine Embassy in November 2017. (Photo courtesy of Pelayo A. Llamas)
In our time, Pelayo A. Llamas is an Alameda County Superior Court commissioner. He was appointed on March 4, 2019.
Previously he was with the Oakland City Attorney’s office from 1999 to 2010. He tried solo practice for a while but went back to the City Attorney’s office in 2012 as a Senior Deputy City Attorney.
Before that, he was an associate at Larson & Burnham from 1992 to 1998, then at Berding & Weil from 1998 to 1999. He earned a BA in History in 1986 from UC Berkeley and got his JD from the Santa Clara University School of Law in 1992.
He is a member of the Alameda County Bar Association, the Advisory Board of the Filipino Bar Association of Northern California and the Earl Warren American Inn of Court.
He is running unopposed (as of this writing) for the office of Superior Court Judge in Alameda County. The election is on June 7, 2022. Llamas is the first Fil-Am judicial officer in Alameda County and hopes to be the first Fil-Am judge in Alameda County if he is elected.
Pelayo A. Llamas tells Positivelyfilipino.com about his family roots, the roundabout way he ended up in law, his interesting choice of law practice, the situation with the US justice system, and muses about Duterte.
Q: We are Positivelyfilipino.com so, please tell us about your background. Where did you and your parents originate from in the Philippines and when did you come to the US?
A: My father, Pelayo F. Llamas, was from Pagsanjan, Laguna, the twelfth of 14 children. His father, Don Vicente Llamas, worked in government service under the Spanish Crown and under the US Commonwealth, as municipal councilor, justice of the peace and tax revision board member. My father graduated from the University of the Philippines with a law degree and passed the Bar exam in 1941. When the Philippines gained independence in 1946, he was in one of the first crop of people sent to Washington, DC to train at the US State Department to create the Philippine Foreign Service. He served for 35 years as a diplomat and retired as an ambassador after postings in the US, France, England, Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Argentina.
Campaign materials for grandfather Don Vicente Llamas’ bid for Laguna governor in 1922 – 100 years before Pelayo’s bid for Alameda County judge. (Photo courtesy of Pelayo A. Llamas)
Llamas’ father, Pelayo F. Llamas, in Paris 1954 as a young diplomat for the Philippine Foreign Service (Photo courtesy of Pelayo A. Llamas)
My mother is from Kobe, Japan. My father met her during his four-year assignment in Japan as Consul. My two older sisters were born there. Upon his re-assignment, they all moved to New Orleans, Louisiana where I was born followed by my younger sister. When I was seven years old, my father was assigned to be Ambassador to Taipei. It was during our move that I first met Carlos P. Romulo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_P._Romulo). His wife, my Tita Virginia, was queen of the 1922 Manila Carnival (https://manilacarnivals.blogspot.com/2008/12/41-1922-queen-of-manila-carnival.html).
Pelayo A. Llamas as a small boy (front at left) with his mother and three sisters. Taken at the Philippine Embassy in Taipei in 1973. (Photo courtesy of Pelayo A. Llamas)
Aunt Virginia Llamas Romulo and Carlos P. Romulo in front of their home “Kasiyahan” in Makati, 1960. (Photo courtesy of Pelayo A. Llamas)
After living in Taipei, Manila, and Japan, we moved back to the Bay Area in the US when I was middle school age. My mother, three sisters, and I stayed there while my father went alone to his final assignment as ambassador in Argentina for five years. He retired upon my high school graduation. Unfortunately, he died suddenly just a couple of years later in 1984 when I was 20.
I am now 58 years old and have been married twice. First to a Filipina and now to a Japanese. I have a 26-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son. I have lived in Oakland for 30 years. My mother and sisters all live within 20 minutes of each other. Our family is very international, like a mini-United Nations. Most of us are multi-lingual. One of my sisters is married to a Russian. The other to a Belgian. So, at family gatherings, you can hear English, French, Japanese, and Spanish being spoken at the same time.
Q: Who was your role model lawyer?
A: I frankly did not have a particular role model lawyer. Even though my father passed the bar in the Philippines, he did not practice law. I never considered law as a career when I was young. I was very shy and frightened to speak in public. In seventh grade I intentionally took an F on an oral presentation assignment in science class because I did not want to stand in front of the class. But step by step, different life experiences slowly broke the ice. It started with a job I took in high school working at a butcher shop run by two Italian Americans. Initially, I came in at the end of the day to clean up before closing. Then they asked me to come in after school to learn how to cut meat, then to wait on customers. I learned to converse with people of all ages and backgrounds about which cut of meat would be best for what they were preparing. And also, about any topic that would come up. I ended up working there over seven years and paid my way through UC Berkeley with the income. When I decided to study law, I planned to be a real estate transactional lawyer. I took a summer job in the district attorney’s office in Santa Clara County where I had to argue motions and prosecute trials every week. It turned out that I loved the experience and it changed my path. The first seven years of my career ended up being in litigation. Now as a commissioner, I am the center of attention for about six hours a day and have to talk almost continuously.
Q: Are you running for public office and what would be your platform? Who would you be running up against and what would you do differently?
A: I am running for the office of Superior Court Judge, Alameda County. The election is on Tuesday, June 7. It is a non-partisan office. My primary goal as a judge will be to treat everyone with dignity and respect. I have worked as a public servant for two decades and I bring that attitude of service with me when I am on the bench in a judicial capacity. I am sensitive to the fact that many people, coming to court for a hearing can cost them half a day of income. Also, I am committed to having an open mind when hearing all disputes. People want a chance to express their arguments and be taken seriously. To fully listen and consider before making a decision is one of the most important skills for a judge to have. On account of my very international life experience, I bring a level of empathy and cultural sensitivity to the courtroom which is important to the diverse population of Alameda County.
I stand out as a very well qualified candidate for judge because of my extensive legal and judicial experience. I have been working full time as a Superior Court Commissioner for Alameda Count since 2019. I have a designated courtroom (currently, Department 603 in the Fremont Courthouse) and staff and every day I conduct hearings and trials. It is exactly the same work most many judges perform but within a narrower variety of subject areas. I have experience in adjudicating criminal infractions, small claims lawsuits, civil harassment and elder abuse, restraining order cases and family law cases. Before becoming a commissioner, I practiced law for 26 years in a broad variety of firms and a public law office. The matters I handled included personal injury lawsuits, construction disputes, police use-of-force suits, advising the pension board and assisting city council members and staff about government ethics.
Q: Online, you have several specialties in law listed and your interest in real estate law was mentioned. Among them, which is your favorite branch of law and why?
A: I found working in public agency law with the Oakland City Attorney was very stimulating and challenging. There was such a broad variety of legal subjects. I think my favorite area of practice was advising the police department. Police officers are the single most impactful officials we have. They have the individual power to control and change your life and your fate within a moment and must often make decisions in a split second based on limited information. It’s a difficult job. I liked working on police policy and procedures because I could help shape the way Oakland police handled situations involving the public. I had litigated police cases in Federal Court before. After seeing both sides of a case in the course of litigation, I brought my insight to the policy and review side of the department as one of its advisors.
Q: Relate one or two memorable litigation cases when you were principal counselor and why it stands out in your memory.
A: As a Deputy City Attorney in Oakland, I was tasked with shutting down a local motel which was a neighborhood blight and nuisance. Regularly, there was prostitution, fights, loud music, and near chaos. A few times a year a fire would break out in one of the rooms. I worked collaboratively with building inspectors, police, the staff of Councilmember (later Mayor) Jean Quan and most importantly with many local residents. It is often difficult to get residents to come and testify. They suffer through the nuisances and call reports in to the police but they don’t show up for the hearing. Maybe it’s not convenient for them or they just think there is no use. I went out of my way to contact residents and work with them. I think they saw how much I cared and so they came to testify as witnesses. The motel eventually got shut down and the property was developed into a senior living facility. I was proud to have been a part in making a significant improvement to the quality of life.
“I liked working on police policy and procedures because I could help shape the way Oakland police handled situations involving the public.”
Q: You have been a Deputy City Attorney for many years and a DA for one summer. And you are a Filipino working in the American justice system. Tell us what you think are the flaws in the American justice system?
A: What I have to say generally about the legal system in America is: it’s slow and cumbersome. We are very procedure-oriented and trials by jury of your peers is time consuming. But those features are there to protect the due process rights of individuals. So, overall, it’s consistent with the values of a democracy. We put a priority on protecting a person’s rights. After all, what’s the point of having individual rights in our Constitution if they are not protected within the court system.
The California Court system is the biggest in the country and one of the biggest in the world with over 1,700 judgeships in 58 counties. I think some of the flaws in our system include the lack of sufficient budgets to make the courts more user-friendly and accessible. Within the bounds of due process, we need to expand the ability to conduct hearings by remote (video) instead of in-person. This saves time and money for all involved. For a civil case hearing that might take five minutes, parties and lawyers will not need to devote hours of time commuting to a courthouse or missing half a day of work.
Due to the State of Emergency arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, remote video has been authorized and instituted for many case types. It is working fairly well. Changes in the law will be needed to authorize this in the post-COVID world. Funding is also needed to expand the technology in each courthouse in order to provide better infrastructure for remote hearings.
There is also a high number of family law cases in which people cannot afford a lawyer. They represent themselves regarding some critical issues like child custody, visitation and child support. Alameda has a self-help center where people can get advice from a lawyer but they still represent themselves in hearings. We need to expand funding to self-help centers.
Q: What if you were somehow transported to the Philippines still under President Duterte and tasked with convincing that government to return to the rule of law? How would you do it?
A: That is an interesting question. I have been curious to learn more about the Philippine legal system after reading repeated news reports of extrajudicial killings since the beginning of the Duterte administration. From what little I know, it is unlikely that such events reported in the Philippines would happen in the USA. We do not have a national police system. Nor do we have a presidency that can legislate and create legal immunities from liability. Our police forces are local and are directed by their own governing bodies within cities or counties, not by the president of the USA. We also have systems in place to investigate any police overstepping authority. I have more questions than answers, but I do wonder if police who are involved in shootings in the Philippines are put on leave and whether an internal investigation of each shooting is performed. I also wonder how much political will exists for the three branches of government to check and balance each other.
“People want a chance to express their arguments and be taken seriously. To fully listen and consider before making a decision is one of the most important skills for a judge to have”
Q: One of the online accounts about you relates your preference for reading. In pop culture, pick the most authentic character depiction of a lawyer from Perry Mason to any character from John Grisham’s books and why you think so.
A: I think the most authentic depiction of practicing law is the character played by Joe Pesci in the 1992 movie “My Cousin Vinny.” It’s a light-hearted comedy about an inexperienced everyday guy who, as a new lawyer, defends his younger cousin against murder charges. Vinny’s use of common sense (and his skeptical and argumentative personality) in the investigation of the facts and witnesses lead him to conduct very effective cross-examinations. He draws out doubt, for example about a witness’s ability to clearly see what happened and another witness’s estimate of how much time has passed. It’s so simple and easy to follow but is so pure. I recommend it to anyone who may be thinking about entering a courtroom or just for a good laugh.
Q: Aside from the late Hawaii Justice Benjamin Menor, CA Chief Justice Tani Cantil Sakauye and CA AG Rob Bonta, are there other high profile Filipino lawyers you know? Is it true that it’s easier for Filipino Americans to get into the US justice system than either of the Houses? Will there be a time when a Filipino American will sit and matter in the US Supreme Court – what will it take?
Llamas with California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, March 2019 in Sacramento, California following the State of the Judiciary address.
A: I would not agree that it’s easier for Fil-Ams to get into the US justice system at the highest level. That’s an illusion. Chief Justice Cantil Sakauye’s and AG Bonta’s accomplishments are extraordinary. They are in those positions as a result of their individual talents and efforts, supplemented by community support. They were driven to achieve. Becoming an elected official requires one developing the will to pursue office and developing a broad base of supporters. There are a few dozen Fil-Ams elected to local governments in California, such as city councils (http://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/filam-winners-in-2020-elections) but Rob Bonta was the only Fil-Am to ever be elected to our entire 120-member California Legislature. Since he became California Attorney General, we again have no Fil-Am representation in the state legislature. These trailblazers should mentor and support others to follow in their footsteps. The door has been opened. Now others should be encouraged to enter move forward.
There is a National Filipino American Lawyers Association with hundreds of members, as well as dozens of local Fil-Am bar associations throughout the USA. We are well represented in the profession. Entry into the legal profession is achieved by individual efforts: studying and passing the bar exam. But we have very few Fil-Am judges in the Bay Area and California, despite the sizable Fil-Am population. In the Bay Area there is Judge Benjamin Reyes in Contra Costa County, Judge Renee Reyna in San Mateo County, and Judge Audra Ibarra in Santa Clara County. Retired Judge Ronald Quidachay was appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 1983 to serve in San Francisco, and was the only Fil-Am judge in the Bay Area until 2017.
For a Fil-Am to make it into the US Supreme Court, we need more judges in the Federal Court System. I only know of two Fil-Am Federal judges. The highest ranking is Patrick Bumatay of San Diego who was appointed in 2019 to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal. The other is District Court Judge Lorna Tianco Schofield in New York.
The chances of getting a Fil-Am on the US Supreme Court would increase if we could get more judges on the bench for consideration – plain and simple. Fil-Am lawyers need to make the commitment to public service and strive to make it to the bench. I am working on a program for all California Fil-Am bar associations to create a pipeline to a judicial career. It will focus on law students to lawyers with seven years of practice.
Q: Are you still in touch with your Filipino-ness? What is your favorite dish and which dialect do you speak at home?
A: I come from a large family and have many cousins who still live in the Philippines. I chat or talk with them on What’s App or Viber. I’ve been back to visit twice in the last six years. Once for Christmas and the other for a wedding. My favorite destination is El Nido in the north of Palawan Island. The water is so pure and it’s fairly unpopulated.
I recently attended six of nine Novena masses by Zoom after my cousin died in Manila at the end of January 2022. It was a challenge as most of them started at 2 a.m. in my time zone. Unfortunately, my Tagalog is very weak because my father died almost 38 years ago and no one else in my immediate family speaks it. I’m better with Spanish, which I studied because my dad and most of my relatives in his generation spoke it. I’ve been waiting for Tagalog to be added to the DuoLingo app.
I am a good cook and my family takes food seriously. Although my mother did the daily cooking, it was my father who cooked for big occasions like Christmas and Thanksgiving. A Llamas family specialty is a stuffed boneless capon. My cousins have four restaurants which serve our family dishes. Three are in Metro Manila and one is in London (www.RomuloCafe.com). Probably my easiest dish to cook is Binagoongang baboy. The more complicated is kare-kare, which our family always serves with pork adobo.
Harvey Barkin is editor-in-chief at FilAm Star in San Francisco, correspondent for the San Jose Mercury News and content writer for an industry-specific newsletter. He is also a reporting fellow for campaigns and grant-funded projects. Previously, he was a correspondent for news portal BenitoLink, a tech writer for Silicon Valley start-ups and a book reviewer for Small Press in Rhode Island. His work has appeared in various media from advertising copy and collateral to B2B content and in various outlets from Valley Catholic to Inside Kungfu.
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