Gov. Jerry Brown is trying to make amends for missteps he made in his youth.

Brown nominated Goodwin Liu to the Supreme Court last week, hoping he has found a justice in the mold of a giant in California's legal history, Roger Traynor.

Like Liu, Traynor was a 40-year-old UC Berkeley law professor with limited courtroom experience when Gov. Culbert Olson appointed him in 1940. Brown's father, Gov. Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, elevated Traynor to chief justice in 1964.

For three decades, Traynor was integral to a court that expanded civil rights and pioneered what are now basic concepts of civil law. In Brown's view, Traynor is the most distinguished justice ever to serve this state.

Traynor's opinions resonate today. He wrote a 1948 opinion striking down California's ban on interracial marriage, 19 years before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down miscegenation laws nationwide.

Liu likely will be confirmed by September when the state Supreme Court takes up a case involving California's ban on same-sex marriage, an issue that turns in part on interracial marriage cases of an earlier time.

"I'm hoping that Justice Liu will be serving in that tradition," Brown said.

When he became governor the first time, Brown inherited a court that was among the nation's finest. By the time he left office, the court was fending off assaults that tarnished its standing and, in time, would dramatically alter its course.

Predictably – and inaccurately – Republican partisans compare Brown's selection of Liu to Brown's nomination 35 years ago of another 40-year-old, Rose Elizabeth Bird.

Brown's decision in 1977 to nominate Bird as chief justice probably was the worst political blunder of his early years as governor.

Bird, who died in 1999, faced withering criticism, some of it rooted in sexism, some of it from old-timers who couldn't get over the whole diversity thing, and much of it from business interests.

For all her intelligence, Chief Justice Bird did herself no favors. She could be haughty and dismissive, not a shrewd tactic when dealing with self-important lawyers and judges. She handed her enemies an ideal campaign issue by finding fault with every death sentence that came before her.

Voters ousted her in a historic election in 1986, along with two other Brown-appointed justices, Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso, who deserved better.

Republican Gov. George Deukmejian used those vacancies, plus an earlier departure by a fourth Brown appointee, to name a majority on the seven-member court. Ever since, Republican governors' appointees have controlled the Supreme Court.

"I'm not going to rewrite history," Brown said when I asked if he regretted making Bird chief justice. "She made important rulings. But her decisions on the death penalty colored everything else."

There are fundamental differences between Bird and Liu. Liu will be one of seven justices, not the chief. Bird had a knack for rubbing people the wrong way. Liu, the son of physicians who emigrated from Taiwan, is said to be collegial. Bird's opinions were far to the left. Colleagues say Liu is a mainstream liberal.

Liu does, however, have his share of self-inflicted battle scars. In 2006, he wrote a withering 16-page critique of President George W. Bush's Supreme Court nominee, Samuel A. Alito.

Liu later recanted part of the screed as unnecessarily mean. It definitely was impolitic, as he learned when President Barack Obama nominated him for a position on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Senate Republicans exacted revenge by blocking his confirmation and handing the president one of his more ignominious defeats.

Obama's loss became Brown's opportunity when the governor personally phoned Liu to gauge his interest in joining the California Supreme Court. The governor and his wife, attorney Anne Gust Brown, spent hours with Liu at the governor's Oakland office.

Brown said he was impressed by Liu's demeanor and his scholarship, citing, for example, an article by Liu about U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, famous for having dissented from 19th-century cases upholding segregation statutes in Southern states.

"It is important to have someone with academic background, and a broad understanding of the history of the law," said Brown, who like Liu is a Yale Law School graduate.

Brown knows his share of history. He's well aware of his father's line that whenever he appointed a judge, he would create one ingrate and nine enemies.

Liu may not be an ingrate. But Brown did disappoint some allies by not selecting a qualified Latino to replace Justice Carlos Moreno.

With Moreno's retirement, the court will have no Latino, a glaring omission in this heavily Latino state.

Brown and others told me he considered several Latinos, among them UCLA Law School Dean Rachel Moran, UC Davis Law School Dean Kevin R. Johnson, and Christopher Cameron, a Southwestern Law School professor.

Moran, however, would have been forced to relinquish a job she took in October, hardly sufficient time in a position of that stature. Johnson had no interest in competing with Cameron, one of his closest friends.

In the end, Brown concluded Liu was the best one for the job. Brown might get an opportunity to appoint one or two other justices. But Liu also could be his only high court appointment.

Judicial appointments can be a governor's most lasting legacy. For now, Brown's legacy is entwined with Bird. He'd much prefer to be known for having found the next Traynor.

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.