By LARRY MARGASAK
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama faced his first defeat of a judicial nominee 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.
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.
To most Republicans and conservative allies, he’s also a judicial activist who made insulting remarks about the Supreme Court nominations of John Roberts, now the chief justice, and Justice Samuel Alito.
They have also 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.
Two senators favoring a continued filibuster were Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. Both were part of a group of 14 senators who previously pledged not to filibuster judicial nominees except under extraordinary circumstances.
“The nomination of Mr. Goodwin Liu does rise to a level of extraordinary circumstances and therefore McCain will seek to filibuster the nomination,” McCain’s office said in a statement Wednesday.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, another of the so-called “gang of 14,” said, “His outrageous attack on Judge Alito convinced me that Goodwin Liu is an ideologue.
“Goodwin Liu should run for elected office, not serve as a judge. Ideologues have their place, just not on the bench.”
Leahy told the Senate that the senators from the group of 14 are failing to uphold their own principles of filibustering only in extraordinary circumstances. “Well, let’s be responsible,” Leahy said. “Let’s bring it to a vote.”
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said, “The notion that somehow professor Liu is an ideologue … is belied by his actual record.”
“Why on earth this record of this exceptionally qualified man would justify a filibuster is utterly beyond me and suggests that unfortunately we’ve been mired in partisanship,” Coons said.
Republicans and conservatives believe Liu expressed his true judicial philosophy in a radio interview after Obama’s election. He said then that liberals “have the opportunity to actually get our ideas and the progressive vision of the Constitution and of law and policy into practice.”
Liu had said Alito’s vision was an America “where police may shoot and kill an unarmed boy … where federal agents may point guns at ordinary citizens during a raid, even after no sign of resistance … where the FBI may install a camera where you sleep … where a black man may be sentenced to death by an all-white jury for killing a white man, absent … analysis showing discrimination.”
Liu told his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee that this “was not an appropriate way to describe Justice Alito.” He described his own language as “unduly harsh,” and added, “If I had it to do over again I would have deleted it.”
Writing about the chief justice as a nominee, Liu said that “with remarkable consistency throughout his career, Roberts … applied his legal talent to further the cause of the far right.”
Liu told the committee that “whatever I may have written in the books and the articles would have no bearing on my action as a judge.”
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, speaking on the Senate floor, said that Liu had waited four years “to provide that semi-apology to Justice Alito for the shameful remarks” and that “frankly we just can’t depend on this conversion sticking.”
By LARRY MARGASAK
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama faced his first defeat of a judicial nominee 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.
To most Republicans and conservative allies, he’s a judicial activist who made insulting remarks about the Supreme Court nominations of John Roberts, now the chief justice, and Justice Samuel Alito.
Two senators favoring a continued filibuster were Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. Both were part of a group of 14 senators who previously pledged not to filibuster judicial nominees except under extraordinary circumstances.
“The nomination of Mr. Goodwin Liu does rise to a level of extraordinary circumstances and therefore McCain will seek to filibuster the nomination,” McCain’s office said in a statement Wednesday.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, another of the so-called “gang of 14,” said, “His outrageous attack on Judge Alito convinced me that Goodwin Liu is an ideologue.
“Goodwin Liu should run for elected office, not serve as a judge. Ideologues have their place, just not on the bench.”
Leahy told the Senate that the senators from the group of 14 are failing to uphold their own principles of filibustering only in extraordinary circumstances. “Well, let’s be responsible,” Leahy said. “Let’s bring it to a vote.”
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said, “The notion that somehow professor Liu is an ideologue … is belied by his actual record.”
“Why on earth this record of this exceptionally qualified man would justify a filibuster is utterly beyond me and suggests that unfortunately we’ve been mired in partisanship,” Coons said.
Republicans and conservatives believe Liu expressed his true judicial philosophy in a radio interview after Obama’s election. He said then that liberals “have the opportunity to actually get our ideas and the progressive vision of the Constitution and of law and policy into practice.”
Liu had said Alito’s vision was an America “where police may shoot and kill an unarmed boy … where federal agents may point guns at ordinary citizens during a raid, even after no sign of resistance … where the FBI may install a camera where you sleep … where a black man may be sentenced to death by an all-white jury for killing a white man, absent … analysis showing discrimination.”
Liu told his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee that this “was not an appropriate way to describe Justice Alito.” He described his own language as “unduly harsh,” and added, “If I had it to do over again I would have deleted it.”
Writing about the chief justice as a nominee, Liu said that “with remarkable consistency throughout his career, Roberts … applied his legal talent to further the cause of the far right.”
Liu told the committee that “whatever I may have written in the books and the articles would have no bearing on my action as a judge.”
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, speaking on the Senate floor, said that Liu had waited four years “to provide that semi-apology to Justice Alito for the shameful remarks” and that “frankly we just can’t depend on this conversion sticking.”
AP-WF-05-19-11 1810GMT
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