In the ultimate reminder that elections have consequences, today liberal Democrat Governor Jerry Brown nominated liberal Democrat professor Goodwin Liu to a spot on the State Supreme Court. No doubt that all of the very valid and important reasons for why conservatives rallied to oppose confirming Liu to the U.S. Court of Appeals (he was nominated by President Obama, but has failed to gain confirmation by the U.S. Senate). Who can blame conservatives or moderates for opposing Liu? After all his record reads more like that of a political activist than a law professor.
From our friends at the American Conservative Union…
Liu has made it clear that he believes the Constitution is merely a guide to judicial decisions and that what he calls “our collective values,” “evolving norms” and “social understandings” should be the key to judicial decisions. Liu has backed race-based admissions to our universities in an amicus brief regarding a Seattle school district case. Liu’s views on criminal law have drawn the extraordinary opposition of 42 of California’s 58 county district attorneys. Here is what they had to say referring to a paper on the subject Liu wrote in 2005:
“This document demonstrated beyond serious question that his (Liu’s) views on criminal law, capital punishment and the role of the federal courts in second-guessing state decisions are fully aligned” with an appeals court that is “far outside of the judicial mainstream.”
As for the issue of congressional deference to presidential nominees, it was Goodwin Liu who helped lead an attack on the Supreme Court nominations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. Liu said that Roberts had “an ideological agenda hostile to the environmental workplace and consumer protections. In testifying against the Alito nomination, Liu claimed that “the America envisioned by his (Alito’s) record is not the America we know, nor is it the America we aspire to be.” Liu then called Alito “at the margin, not the mainstream.”
Courtesy of our friends at Verum Serum, check out this video of Liu, articulating the rationale for why black Americans today deserve reparations from non-Blacks for the slavery that existed in America once upon a time — in the name of racial justice.
Liu is a radical liberal who by no means should be a judge at any level, let alone on California’s top court. But like I said above, all of these reasons for opposing Liu for this position will actually have the liberal Democrats who run this state tripping over each other to support his nomination.