WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama faced his first defeat of a judicial nominee on Thursday, as Senate Republicans lined up against a California law professor who boldly asserted his liberal views and leveled acerbic attacks against two conservative Supreme Court justices.
Republicans appeared to have enough votes to continue their filibuster against Goodwin Liu, a 40-year-old legal scholar who could be a dream Supreme Court nominee for liberals one day.
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has been pushing for a vote on Liu, who has been nominated three times for the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals.
Republicans have made Liu their prime example of a judicial nominee who, in their view, has been so unabashedly liberal in his writings and statements that he does not deserve an up-or-down vote.
The politics were reversed in 1987, when Democrats defeated Republican Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork by citing his conservative writings. Liberals said Bork was a conservative extremist, just as conservatives now say Liu is a liberal extremist.
In both cases, opponents argued the nominees would take their views with them to the bench, allowing those views to trump the Constitution.
For most Democrats and liberal backers, Liu is the type of nominee they want for a lifetime appointment on the federal bench. He supports social issues such as gay marriage and affirmative action. He was given a top rating of unanimously well-qualified by the American Bar Association. He was a Rhodes Scholar and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He received numerous awards for academic and legal achievements, including the highest teaching award at his law school.
