Goodwin Liu

Goodwin Hon Liu (Chinese: 劉弘威; born October 19, 1970) is an American jurist who has served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of California since 2011. Before his appointment by Governor Jerry Brown, Liu was associate dean and a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley.

The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Liu attended Stanford University before graduating from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and then Yale Law School. On February 24, 2010, President Barack Obama nominated Liu to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. For more than a year, Liu's nomination was delayed amid significant opposition from Republicans in the U.S. Senate. On May 19, 2011, the Senate failed to invoke cloture on Liu's nomination with the necessary supermajority in a 52–43 vote, and on May 25, 2011, Liu informed President Obama that he was withdrawing his name from consideration to the seat on the Ninth Circuit.

On July 26, 2011, Governor Jerry Brown nominated Liu to a seat on the Supreme Court of California, succeeding Associate Justice Carlos R. Moreno. Three days later, President Obama formally notified the Senate that he was withdrawing Liu's nomination for the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Liu was sworn into the California Supreme Court on September 1, 2011. Provided by Wikipedia