Liu Nomination Pushes 9th Circuit Farther Left
by Ross Kaminsky

03/03/2010

By nominating UC Berkeley Law Professor Goodwin Liu to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Barack Obama is working to push the nation’s most liberal – and most overturned – court even further outside the mainstream of American jurisprudence.

Liu, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, will face certain opposition from many Republicans in part because of his many liberal positions but also because he took an active role in opposing Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

Liu offered an amicus brief to the California Supreme Court in which he and others argued that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. In that 2008 case, the court sided with Liu and other supporters of gay marriage, overturning the state’s prior ban on gay marriage. However, after Proposition 8 passed in November, 2008, the same court then declined to overturn the will of the voters, though it allowed previously made same-sex marriages to remain in force. As Ed Whelan of National Review notes, “Given that the anti-Prop 8 case will soon be on appeal to the Ninth Circuit, Liu’s position on this question is hardly academic.â€