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Goodwin Liu

Goodwin Liu

U.S. Circuit Court for the Ninth Circuit
Nominated: February 24, 2010
Hearing Date: March 24, 2010

Committee Questionnaire
Reported By Committee:

 

  • CWA - Liu Opposition Letter to Senate - The bottom line is Goodwin Liu is a “loose cannon” who would be deadly to American freedom if empowered with the respect and responsibility of deciding some of the most important cases in our nation as a circuit court judge. He should never be confirmed as a judge.
  • Liberty Counsel: Liu Opposition Letter - Liu’s lack of understanding about America, its judicial system and its economic system were further illuminated when he commented that Chief Justice Roberts was unqualified because of his belief in free enterprise, private ownership of property, and limited government.
  • Judicial Liusurpation of Legislative Power - In the following interview, Goodwin Liu, President Obama's nominee to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, explains why judges exercising judicial power should not limit themselves to legislative texts. The interview can be viewed here (the portion regarding Liu's Activist / "Progressive Jurisprudence" begins at the 1:54 mark). Here is a transcription of his selected remarks.
  • CAP Memo for Movement on Liu - Goodwin Liu is unfit for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench because his statements and record demonstrate an extreme liberal agenda that he would impose from the bench. ACTION: The nomination of Goodwin Liu is one of those rare instances constituting “extraordinary circumstances” where the U. S. Senate should reject this nominee as unsuitable for a lifetime appointment.
  • Republicans Stop First Liu Hearing on 3-24-10
  • JAG Letter to Senate re Liu Record - "Unless Mr. Liu is able to show during his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee that his judicial philosophy is not represented by his previous publications and statements of record, then I believe you will find that his judicial philosophy is inconsistent with the Constitution and, accordingly, that he is not suited to serve as an Article III judge.
  • JAG: Liu Advocates Doubling Spending on Education and Extending it to Illegal Aliens - Liu Thinks You're a Nationalistic Chauvinist if You Don't Like His Idea of Forcing U.S. Taxpayers to Deficit Spend on Education for Illegal Aliens.
  • Ed Whelan: Liu is both a demagogue and a judicial activist - Concerning Liu's attacks Justice Samuel Alito, Whelan concludes that Liu's "remarks are patently demagogic and assume a constitutional scheme in which judges, and only judges, make policy on everything: Liu states that 'Alito's record envisions an America' where police 'may' do all sorts of things that Liu (in some instances reasonably, in others less evidently so) doesn't like. What Liu obscures is that Alito's approach would enable the political processes to establish reasonable policies on all these matters." Read the details per Whelan.
  • Liu Opposed CA Marriage Amendment - Liu wrote that Prop 8 [the California Marriage Amendment that was passed statewide by California voters] clearly discriminates against gay men and lesbians."
  • Liu Op Ed Attacks Marriage Voters as “Narrow and Ultimately Temporary Majority” - Liu wrote in an op-ed attacking a majority of California voters who supported the CA Marriage Amendment (Prop 8): "Each of the 18,000 same-sex couples and their families in California represents a potential catalyst for broader acceptance of gay marriage. The more familiar we become with gay spouses and their children -- as our friends, neighbors and co-workers -- the more gay marriage will become an unremarkable thread of our social fabric. Proposition 8 may then come to be viewed, in the long run, not as an enduring constitutional principle but as the will of a narrow and ultimately temporary majority." One is left to wonder, how liberal is Liu if he seriously thinks that a majority of the voters in one of the most liberal states in America are "narrow and temporary?"
  • LA Times Like Liu - The L.A. Times tells you all you need to know about why Liu would not be a good judge.
  • Whelan: Liu on Legislating “Welfare Rights” From the Bench - Whelan: "Liu’s approach would have the courts treat Congress and the state legislatures as quasi-administrative bodies, with their reasoning and deliberation subjected to probing (but ill-defined) judicial review.
  • Liu AC Brief in Opposition to CA Marriage Amendment
  • Liu OpEd Opposing Confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts
  • YouTube: Liu’s activism in his own words - Listen from the 1:55 mark through the end as Liu explains why he prefers evolving standards of decency over textualism.
  • Human Events / Kaminsky: Liu Nomination Pushes 9th Circuit Farther Left - Kaminsky: "Goodwin Liu’s desire to 'construct, contest, and enact…distributive commitments in our public culture' is a view greatly to be feared in a judicial nominee."
  • WaTimes: Liu is Another Radical - "In a 2008 Stanford Law Review article, Mr. Liu wrote that judges should engage in 'socially situated modes of reasoning that appeal ... to the culturally and historically contingent meanings of particular social goods in our own society' and to 'determine, at the moment of decision, whether our collective values on a given issue have converged to a degree that they can be persuasively crystallized and credibly absorbed into legal doctrine.'"
  • YouTube: Sessions et al on Liu - Sessions: "[Liu] believes the Constitution is something judges can manipulate to have it say what they think culture or evolving standards of decency requires in a given day."
  • Liu for Racial Quotas in School Choice - Whelan: "Liu is a supporter of racial quotas in the schools, and he supports school choice only insofar as it furthers that goal."
  • WaTimes: Liu Wants a Judicially Created Constitutional Right to Welfare - Wa Times: "Liu's goal was to create a judicially enforceable, constitutional right to welfare. He hastened to add that such a revolution would only be pushed in an 'evolutionary' way - not immediately - by 'cue[ing] the policymaking process toward greater deliberation and rationality.' This agenda is dangerous. Judges have less business cueing up policy than referees would have to suggest what plays a quarterback should call."
  • WaPost: Liu presents a direct challenge to a conservative view of constitutional interpretation. - WaPost: The "originalist" views of justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, centered on the original meaning of the Constitution when it was written and amended, are "seriously flawed," Liu has said.
  • Jillian Bandes :: Townhall.com Columnist - Obama Amps Up Liberal Court Nominee - “In Goodwin Liu’s world, the Constitution requires redistribution of economic resources pretty much on a Marxist basis, to those according to their need from those according to their ability,” said Ilya Shapiro, a legal analyst with the libertarian Cato Institute. “He thinks that because there’s a social consensus he believes people should have things like food and health care, as a matter of policy.”
  • Whelan - Goodwin Liu’s Ambition Exceeds Even His Inexperience - Whelan: I’ll note that a story in today’s Washington Post manages to overstate Liu’s meager experience, as it asserts that he “worked only a few years in private practice.” In fact, Liu worked as a junior associate at O’Melveny & Myers for less than two years (21 months).
  • Whelan: Goodwin Liu on Reparations for Slavery - Liu Shocks: "I agree that [without reparations] the reconciliation can’t fully occur."
  • CATO’s Ilya Shapiro and Evan Turgeon on Liu - Liu’s appointment would not only eliminate any hope of restoring balance to an already skewed Ninth Circuit, but would betray the vital role the Founders entrusted to the judiciary. Nobody willing to exalt a nebulous “social consensus” over the Constitution’s plain text should sit on an appellate court bench.
  • ALG on Liu: Wonderland? - In sum, Liu would violate Thomas Jefferson’s solemn proclamation of the limits of power: “In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” Goodwin Liu would break what remains of those tattered, rusted chains of the Constitution and replace them with the elitist, Ivory Tower rule of the entitlement state.
  • ALG Nominee Alert on Liu - Liu’s judicial philosophy that judges should render decisions based on societal consensus at a given moment rather than foundational principles is incredibly dangerous. He shouldn’t be on any court, especially not a court of appeals."
  • Heritage’s Bluey: Goodwin Liu - Obama’s Most Radical Judicial Nominee - Many pundits are speculating that the Ninth Circuit may be Liu’s stepping stone to the Supreme Court. If this is the case, he could potentially be one of the most activist justices the High Court has seen yet. Even the Washington Post admits that Obama’s other federal nominees have been “more moderate” than Liu.
  • Whelan: Liu is Obama’s Worst Judicial Nominee ... So Far - Wonder of wonders, Liu’s freewheeling constitutional approach yields a plethora of extreme left-wing results, including his support for the invention of a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Also noteworthy is his denunciation of the traditional American principles of “free enterprise,” “private ownership of property,” and “limited government” as “code words for an ideological agenda hostile to environmental, workplace, and consumer protections”
  • RNC:  Liu is “Unabashed Liberal” Who Will Use Federal Bench To Enact Obama’s Far-Left Agenda
  • Even ABC concedes that Liu is a Liberal - "This is a test case," said Vladek. "Most of the early Obama nominees were tried-and-true moderate judges with extensive experience on district courts. While Liu is not the first non-judge to be nominated by the president, he is probably the most prominent liberal academic."
  • Opposition Research - Here's a pro Goodwin Liu website.
  • Judicial Watch Letter to Senate Judiciary Opposing Liu - Liu's: "activist theory for interpreting the Constitution would substitute the whims of individual judges over the text and original meaning of the U.S. Constitution."
  • Heritage / Darling: Why Liu Matters
  • Whelan on Amar/Starr on Liu - Amar and Starr provide zero reason for anyone to believe that Liu would carry out the judicial role in [a principled] manner, and there is nothing in his record to support speculation that he would.
  • 42 California Dist. Attorneys Oppose Liu (Letter) - Professor Liu’s paper demonstrates beyond serious question that his views on criminal law, capital punishment, and the role of the federal courts in second-guessing state decisions are fully aligned with the judges who have made the Ninth Circuit the extreme outlier that it presently is. We urge the Judiciary Committee and the full Senate to reject this nomination.
  • Criminal Justice Legal Foundation Opposition Letter - Liu is ready, willing, and able to seize on every excuse to reverse a capital sentence and to brush aside every reason to affirm one. We have too many such judges on the Ninth Circuit already. The last thing we need is one more. The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation urges the committee to reject this nomination.
  • 42 of 58 CA DAs Oppose Liu - Amazingly, 72% of California's county district attorneys oppose Liu.
  • Republicans Slam Obama Judicial Nominee Over 117 Omissions From Record - Senate Republicans on Tuesday slammed one of the Obama administration's most controversial judicial nominees for failing to initially disclose more than 100 of his speeches, publications and other background materials -- an omission the Republicans called unprecedented and a possible attempt to "hide his most controversial work."