An Exceptional Nominee
The first major appeals-court nomination fight of the Obama presidency may be shaping up over Goodwin Liu, a highly qualified teacher and legal scholar. Mr. Liu, nominated to the San Francisco-based United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, is raising hackles on the right because of some of his legal views, and because he is seen as a strong candidate for the Supreme Court in the near future. The White House and Senate Democrats should fight hard for the confirmation.
Mr. Liu was born in Augusta, Ga., where his parents, doctors from Taiwan, moved to practice medicine in an underserved area. He graduated from Stanford, was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, and then graduated from Yale Law School. After clerking for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, he became a highly regarded law professor at the University of California-Berkeley.
Mr. Liu, who is 39, has written extensively on the Constitution and education law, among other areas. His views are not uniformly liberal — he has written in support of school vouchers and charter schools, market-oriented policies that many liberals and labor unions strongly oppose. But Mr. Liu’s conservative critics are taking aim at his support for affirmative action, gay marriage rights, and national health care, and his endorsement of the view that the Constitution is a document that evolves over time.
His views fall within the mainstream of legal scholarship and American politics. Kenneth Starr, the conservative lawyer who investigated President Bill Clinton, and is now the dean