Goodwin Liu, Associate Dean and Professor of Law at the UC Berkeley School of Law
Nominee for the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
39 Years Old.
It's unlikely that anyone selected by the Obama administration for the appellate courts will have an easy time getting confirmed these days. And it may be even harder for someone with the dreaded label of "liberal" – such as Goodwin Liu, a professor and associate dean at Boalt Hall, the UC Berkeley law school.
Yet in selecting a judge for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, it is hard to image anyone who's better qualified than Liu.
The son of Taiwanese immigrants who grew up in Sacramento – he's a 1987 graduate of Rio Americano High School – Liu was a Rhodes scholar and clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Highly respected as a constitutional scholar with a long record of public service and as an expert on education finance, he's also a winner of Berkeley's highest teaching award and widely thought to be as accessible and open-minded as anyone in his field.
Liu, however, testified against the confirmation of Justice Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court and wrote an opinion piece warning that John Roberts, now the chief justice, would pull the court to the right. More, important, he authored a major study challenging constitutional "originalism" and other conservative doctrines.
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/02/28/2568880/liu-is-more-than-qualified-to.htmlPrevious postsProgressives to rejoice, Obama nominates Goodwin Liu (Thu Feb-25-10)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7789498