Alison M. Tucher

Alison M. Tucher was sworn in as Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, Division Three, on August 30, 2021, after serving three years as an associate justice in Division Four.  Before joining this court, she was a judge on the Alameda County Superior Court, where she sat in family law and criminal court assignments and chaired her court’s committees on judicial education and juror participation.  Justice Tucher also sat as a pro tem on the First District Court of Appeal, Division Two.

Justice Tucher grew up in the Bay Area.  She left to attend Williams College, graduating magna cum laude with a B.A. in economics and winning a scholarship to study at Cambridge University, where she received a B.A./M.A. in engineering.  Justice Tucher then worked in national security and arms control in Washington, D.C. before returning to the Bay Area to earn a J.D. from Stanford Law School.  At Stanford, she served on the editorial board of the law review and graduated Order of the Coif.

After law school, Justice Tucher served as a law clerk for Judge William A. Norris on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice David A. Souter on the United States Supreme Court.  She then spent three years trying criminal cases in Santa Clara County Superior Court as a Deputy District Attorney.

In 1998, Justice Tucher joined Morrison & Foerster LLP in San Francisco, where she practiced law until her appointment to the bench at the end of 2013.  At the firm, she handled a variety of intellectual property and commercial cases in trial courts, appellate courts, and private arbitrations.  Benchmark Litigation listed her among the “Top 250 Women in Litigation” nationally and among “Local Litigation Stars of California.”  Justice Tucher also maintained an active pro bono practice, twice winning freedom for men wrongfully convicted of murder.  For one of these cases, she received the President’s Service Award from the Santa Clara County Trial Lawyers Association and was profiled on CBS News’ The Early Show as an “American Hero.”

While practicing law, Justice Tucher served on several non-profit boards and lectured in law schools, co-teaching a Stanford Law School class on trade secrets. She currently serves on the Judicial Council of California’s Criminal Law Advisory Committee and Tribal Court-State Court Forum, and on the Association of Business Trial Lawyers’ Board of Governors.  She speaks and writes on a variety of legal topics and is a member of the American Law Institute.

Justice Tucher (pronounced “Too’-ker”) and her husband are the parents of two grown children.