Obama Nominates API LGBT Ally For 9th Circuit

Goodwin Liu

This should be the biggest judicial confirmation battle this year (barring any Supreme Court retirements, which are likely). President Barack Obama has nominated UC Berkeley Law School Professor Goodwin Liu for a vacancy on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Liu has impeccable intellectual and legal credentials. From the official White House announcement:

Goodwin Hon Liu is an Associate Dean and Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. An acclaimed scholar, teacher, and lawyer, with experience in both the private and public sectors, Liu is a nationally-recognized expert on constitutional law and education law and policy. In 2009, he received Berkeley's most prestigious teaching award.

Prior to joining the Berkeley faculty in 2003, Liu was an associate at O'Melveny & Myers in Washington, D.C. He clerked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the October 2000 Term, and for Judge David S. Tatel on the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1998-1999. Between his clerkships, Liu served as a Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary at the U.S. Department of Education. He has also worked for the Corporation for National Service, where he helped launch the AmeriCorps program.

Liu was born in Augusta, Georgia, to parents who emigrated from Taiwan, and he grew up in Sacramento where he attended public schools. Liu earned a B.S. from Stanford University in 1991, an M.A from Oxford in 2002 (where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar), and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1998.

The Los Angeles Times notes that if Liu is confirmed, he will be the only Asian American serving on an appellate court in the country.

MadProfessah is familiar with Godwin Liu because we both appeared at a Joint California Assembly-Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing in 2008 testifying that he thought Proposition 8 was unconstitutional and has written published editorials to that effect also.

Goodwin Liu is also known for testifying against Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court and will be an excellent progressive judge and Asian American LGBT ally on the 9th Circuit!