Evening everyone, my name is Gilbert Holmes and I am the Dean at University of La Verne, College of Law.
Soheila has qualities to be a great judge, she has integrity which I believe is the foremost quality a judge has to have is integrity. It has to be a person who you trust them to do what's right in a situation and you have confidence that their decision will be fair even if it goes against you.
I always wanted to be before a judge, who I knew, would call as the judge saw it. Would be totally fair and could not be influenced by other people, could not be influenced by race, could not be influenced by money, could not be influenced by position. Those are kind of judges that are the great judges and Soheila is that kind of person.
You also want a judge who understands the lives of the people that are in front of them. Often times many judges just look at the facts and don't look at the people. Because every case, as I tell my students, every case is a story. Every case has a component to it about the people that are before the court and we all know that Soheila is all about the people. She cares tremendously about peoples lives, peoples opportunities, peoples challenges and peoples situations and thats the kind of person you want to have as a judge, who is going to care about the people and at the same time be fair in the application of the law.
So I am very very happy to stand before you and support Soheila in this position, not because she's an alum, not because of all that she does in the community which is great but because I have experienced great judges and I know one when I see one and I am looking at one right now.
