WASHINGTON — In his opening remarks at the confirmation hearing on law professor Goodwin Liu’s federal appeals court nomination, Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) prompted a ripple of laughter that swept the room as he said what many were likely thinking: “Professor, welcome to the Judiciary Committee and the Supreme Court nomination process.”
In fact, President Barack Obama has nominated Liu, a professor and associate dean at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, one step below the high court. But given a unanimous “Well Qualified” rating from an American Bar Association review of his fitness for the federal bench despite having never served as a judge, many believe Liu, 39, is being groomed for a future Supreme Court nomination.
Thus, conservative Republicans have declared war on Liu’s nomination. They forced his confirmation hearing to be postponed twice and hinted that his liberal views on issues such as affirmative action and the death penalty will lead to unrestrained “judicial activism” should he be confirmed.
If Liu, a 2008 Diverse Emerging Scholar, is confirmed, he would become the only Asian-American to hold an active federal appellate court judgeship. When asked by Diverse about the value of diversity on the court, Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) criticized Obama over his stated desire for prospective judges to have “empathy” for minority and underprivileged groups.
“Empathy – that’s the phrase I expressed concern with President Obama, because empathy is a nonlegal thing, it suggests bias,” Sessions said, adding that Liu’s “writings are pretty far out there and they represent about as far as you can go intellectually to expand judicial power and that makes me nervous.”
Yet Liu, in response to questioning from Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D), said he, if confirmed, will follow the law and respect precedent as a judge, even if such precedents contradict his personal views.
“There’s a clear difference between what things people write as scholars and how one would approach the role of a judge,” Liu said. “As scholars, we are paid, in a sense, to question the boundaries of the law, to raise new theories, to be provocative in ways that it’s simply not the role of a judge to be. The role of a judge is to faithfully follow the law as it is written and as it is given by the Supreme Court, and there is no room for invention or creation of new theories.”
