Jerry Brown Picks Goodwin Liu for California High Court

California Governor Jerry Brown has selected UC Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu for the California Supreme Court, and there is virtually no doubt he will be seated. Liu had been picked by President Obama for a federal appeals court, but Republicans thwarted that. Maura Dolan, Maria L. La Ganga and Jessica Garrison report in the Los Angeles Times.

Liu, 40, whose nomination is expected to be approved by a three-member confirmation panel, will become the fourth Asian on the seven-member, moderately conservative court and probably its most liberal member. He will take the seat left vacant by Justice Carlos Moreno, the court's sole Latino and Democrat who retired Feb. 28.

Since Republican Governors have made so many of the appointments, perhaps Brown wanted someone young enough to keep this slot Democrat for a long time to come?

"The dysfunctionality in Washington and the blockage at all costs by the more extreme Republicans — I don't think that should be given a lot of intellectual weight," said Brown, who sources said offered Liu the job Sunday.

Oh right, because Democrats never blocked Bush’s nominations, especially his judicial ones. Right.

Liu is considered a supporter of gay rights, including [neutering] marriage, and civil rights for other minority groups. He is expected to be on the court in time to hear arguments in the challenge against Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that reinstated a ban on same-sex marriage.

There they go again. Proposition 8, duly adopted, enshrined the natural, historical, universal, essential bride+groom requirement for state marriage licensing explicitly into the state constitution. It shouldn’t have been needed in the first place, and it wasn’t a "ban on same-sex marriage". And what civil rights are lacking for what "other minority groups"? Or will those be "discovered" in the future?

The state high court will decide whether initiative proponents have the legal right to appeal court orders against the measures they sponsored.

Brown had been expected to replace Moreno with another Latino, and Liu's nomination angered some bar activists.

"It should have been a Latino and somebody who was native to Southern California," said Victor Acevedo, president of the Mexican-American Bar Assn. No current member of the court now lives in Southern California.

Racist much? Will the Southern Poverty Leftist Clowns deem MABA a hate group? Doubt it.

"We are almost the majority of the people of the state of California," Acevedo said, "and for the governor to say there isn't one Latino who is qualified to serve on the court is extremely troubling.”

Brown didn’t say that. But the good is that since I'm a minority now, as Acevedo points out, then I guess Liu will discover some new rights for me.

“That to me is like the governor turning a cold shoulder to the Latino community in Southern California."

He doesn't need to care. You'll support him anyway.

Brown said he was not concerned that Liu has never served as a judge. Among California's greatest judges was the late Roger Traynor, who was a tax professor at UC Berkeley when appointed to the state high court, he said.

Let's remember that.

He said that a majority Asian court doesn't say anything in particular about the state. "We're all Americans. We're all Californians," he said. "The accidents of birth, though they indicate biography and life experience, it's just part of a larger mosaic."

Pressed about his failure to choose a Latino [failure?], Brown replied: "What about the African American community? What about the Irish American community? Whenever you select one, I guess you exclude the other. That's inherent in any choice.”

Now you're talking like a conservative, which means you are racist. At least according to the Left.