Cordell: Women have a right to be angry about our criminal justice system and how it responds to the concerns of women. And I’ve been one of those women calling for reform in the system. But an emotional response is not a way to handle anything.

The word “lenient” gets used. For me, that means tempering judgment with compassion, with mercy, when it’s appropriate. I’ve sent people to 25 to life, people who did not deserve mercy, but there are some who do. And we now have minimum sentencing requirements and no judge can show mercy.

There was a backlash to your efforts, even from within liberal circles. At times they were extremely personal. What do you make of those critiques?

Dauber: With respect to the concern about judicial independence, Judge Persky is elected. There is no such thing as an elected official who is independent of the electorate. With respect to whether judges will sentence everyone more harshly, I simply don’t agree that this will occur and I don’t share the dim view of judicial integrity that is embedded in this concern.

This campaign was very tightly messaged and focused on ending impunity for high status offenders like Brock Turner. I think judges are smart enough to be able to distinguish Mr. Turner from poor and black and brown drug and nonviolent offenders.

Cordell: My whole team, we were a group of women who were feminists who have been fighting for criminal justice reform for years, we’re liberals, and we’re getting pilloried by the left.

And it’s so reflective of what’s happening right now in our country. When I went to college in the late ’60s and ’70s, everybody had their say. And today you can’t do that. You can’t bring a speaker in if that’s someone you don’t like. In college, you’re supposed to be exposed to as many views as possible. And now there’s yelling and hollering and people saying there isn’t a safe space.