Gov. Jerry Brown's pardon of former State Sen. Rod Wright focuses attention on one of our most useless laws, the one imposing residency requirements on state legislators and city council members.

Wright was convicted in 2014 of felony perjury and voting fraud for living outside his Southwest Los Angeles-Inglewood district. Wright had sworn that he lived in a modest dwelling in Inglewood. A jury believed what the district attorney charged, that Wright actually lived in a large home in upscale Baldwin Hills, outside the district. Brown said Wright had lived a worthwhile life since his conviction and deserved a pardon.

That same year, former Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon and his wife were found guilty of lying about their residence before his race for city council. An appellate court threw out the convictions, saying the trial judge had issued improper jury instructions.

I cheered for Alarcon then just as I did for Wright when he got his pardon last week. The law said they should live in their districts, have a "domicile" within the boundaries. But domicile is too vague of a term for a criminal conviction. I read the law, as related in the Alarcon decision, and couldn't figure it out. Then of course, there is the way city council district boundaries are shifted around during reapportionment to meet the political needs of the lawmakers in charge of drawing the lines.

The argument for the residency requirement is that it assures lawmakers will be responsive to their constituents. If that were true, why are district boundaries moved in such weird, politically motivated ways in reapportionments? A lawmaker's constituents are forever subject to change. The poor constituent doesn't know who to call.

Finally, these cases take up investigatory resources that could be used elsewhere, such as fighting crime and corruption. The appellate court decision in the Alarcon case told a tale of investigators interviewing neighbors, checking out his homes, even questioning workers at his kid's school. It's noteworthy that there are no district residency requirements for members of Congress.

Gov. Brown just signed a bill, introduced by Wright's successor, easing the residency requirements and making it more difficult for prosecutors to go after such cases.

Still, why not just wipe out the residency requirement.

"Not living in the district is fine, as long as people know about it," Joe Matthews wrote on the Fox&Hounds website. Or as UCI law professor Rick Hasen wrote on his Election Law Blog, "The idea that we need to protect voters from carpetbagging outsiders is outdated and patronizing. If voters don’t want the outsider to be the representative, they can vote that way. But does anyone think the quality of Alarcon’s representation of his district depended at all on whether his primary residence was a few miles outside his district? And even if they did, the remedy would be to vote him out of office."

Central Library west entrance. LA Observed photo.

The central library is the intellectual town square of downtown Los Angeles. Authors speak to book lovers gathered in the library's simply designed, elegant Mark Taper Auditorium. Exhibits, such as current "Radical Kinships," honoring 30 years of Homeboy Industries and its work among L.A. youth, tell the story of the city. The library's New Americans Initiative guides immigrants through American life rather than scorning them.

The great facility, itself, is honored in Susan Orlean's excellent "The Library Book," telling the story of the 1986 fire, which all but destroyed the library. It was rebuilt through the efforts of Angelenos--rich, middle class and poor who would not let it die.

Wednesday night, the library continued its community involvement with a deep dive into one of the most important aspects of civic life--the courts. It was serious and detailed. No Trump. No hot speculation on the plans of Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom. Yet the auditorium was almost filled for a conversation between Kathryn Mickle Werdigar, a retired California Supreme Court justice, and Jim Newton, an author, UCLA faculty member and editor of UCLA's public policy magazine Blueprint. The California Supreme Court Historical Society, along with Public Counsel, sponsored the event. Public Counsel is the public interest law firm that defends the city's poor and helpless.

Werdegar is a restrained and modest person and it took all of Newton's journalistic skill to draw her out.

Like most judges, Werdegar is sympathetic to voters confronted by long lists of appellate and other judges on the ballot. With the exception of voters getting information from sources such as the Los Angeles Times and the League of Women Voters, Californians know little about the judges. But she wouldn't do away with such elections. "I don't think lifetime appointments are a good thing," she said.

The most interesting part of the conversation was when Newton asked Werdegar about how the court is dealing with societal and technical change. He mentioned privacy, water, technology and other aspects of science. These issues often end up in court, finding their way to the Supreme Court.

Newton asked if the court was equipped to handle such matters. "Probably not," Werdegar replied. "Science gets ahead of us."

It was a worthwhile evening and lawyer Bob Wolfe, a devoted historian of the courts, deserves much credit for helping put it together.

Susan Orlean's "The Library Book" has made our downtown library a national celebrity. Wednesday night's nuts and bolts discussion of the Supreme Court reminds us of another side of the library, always working to educate and explain L.A. and bring the community together.