UC Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu (劉弘威), the son of immigrant Taiwanese, was sworn in as an associate justice of the California Supreme Court on Thursday, becoming the first -Taiwanese-American to be appointed to the court.
Liu, 40, was sworn in by Governor Jerry Brown after being unanimously confirmed by a three-member panel of the California Commission on Judicial Appointments.
The confirmation represents a victory for Liu and California after Senate Republicans filibustered and scuttled his nomination for the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth District three months ago. US President Barack Obama had nominated him for that post last year.
Liu is now the only Democrat among the seven California Supreme Court justices.
Liu will begin work immediately as the court is scheduled to hear arguments soon on whether the financial backers of a ban on gay marriage in the state can appeal a federal judge’s decision to strike down the ban.
Liu signed a legal brief with other law professors in 2008, arguing that same-sex couples had the legal right to marry.
That position was a source of criticism in Washington during his unsuccessful bid for the federal appeals court. Judicial Watch, a Washington-based legal advocacy group, brought it up again in a letter to the California commission, saying it was an example that Liu was an “activist” judge unfit for the bench.
Liu comes from a family of physicians. His brother is also a physician in California’s capital, Sacramento, and one of his uncles has a practice in Taiwan. Liu himself was accepted to medical schools at Harvard, Yale and Stanford universities, but chose to break with family tradition and study law.
He was born in Georgia, grew up in Sacramento and earned an undergraduate degree from Stanford University and a law degree from Yale University. He later clerked for US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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