Gov. Newsom should consider Goodwin Liu for California attorney general appointment

The expected confirmation of Xavier Becerra as United States Secretary of Health and Human Services gives Gov. Gavin Newsom the opportunity to name the next attorney general of California. Many names have been floated, but there is one in particular that caught my eye: California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu.

At a time when Newsom is facing serious challenges, appointing a person of Justice Liu’s integrity and experience would make great political sense and would be of enormous benefit to California.

The last three attorneys general — Jerry Brown, Kamala Harris and Xavier Becerra — had been elected officials who went on to other political offices. Many politicians see the position as a springboard to higher office. Justice Liu, by contrast, is not a politician. He has spent his career as a legal scholar and a judge. No recent attorney general has had his broad and deep knowledge of the law. This is especially important as the attorney general must deal with complex legal issues involving criminal justice, police reform, climate change and the pandemic.

Justice Liu’s personal story makes him an attractive pick and would help him win a full term in 2022. The son of Taiwanese immigrants who fled martial law, he is the product of Sacramento public schools. He went to Stanford and then Yale Law School. He is a Rhodes Scholar. The first in his family to earn a law degree, he clerked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before joining UC Berkeley as a professor.

I never had the pleasure of being Justice Liu’s colleague at Berkeley. I arrived many years after he left the faculty for the California Supreme Court. But he had a superb reputation, including having been awarded the university’s top teaching award. As a law professor, Justice Liu devoted his scholarship to impactful study of inequalities in our education system. Combining deep policy expertise and political acumen, he wrote a seminal 2008 report on California school finance that later became the template for the legislative overhaul resulting in the Local Control Funding Formula.

I am very familiar with Justice Liu’s opinions on the California Supreme Court. Now, ten years into his tenure on the state high court, Justice Liu has distinguished himself as a thoughtful and fair-minded jurist. He has authored hundreds of opinions across the entire spectrum of legal issues, state and federal.

Notably, he has been the court’s leading voice on criminal justice reform. His separate opinions in key cases have helped motivate the enactment of several important pieces of legislation, including Assembly Bill 3070 (addressing racial discrimination in jury selection), Senate Bill 1437 (reforming accomplice liability for murder), SB 395 (expanding Miranda rights for juveniles) and SB 1058 (expanding post-conviction relief based on false evidence at trial).

In each instance, legislative committee reports cited Justice Liu’s opinions.

He has urged reforms to end the school-to-prison pipeline. And two weeks after Newsom declared a moratorium on capital punishment in 2019, Justice Liu wrote an opinion calling California’s death penalty “an expensive and dysfunctional system that does not deliver justice or closure in a timely manner, if at all.”

Justice Liu would add diversity and luster to Newsom’s legacy of appointments. Few Asian Americans have ever served as a state attorney general. Justice Liu has an exceptional reputation among lawyers and judges, and he is well known to policymakers and thought leaders throughout California and the nation. He would continue and expand on Becerra’s strong record. His national stature and credibility would be major assets in asserting California’s position of leadership on climate change, health care, immigration and racial justice under the new presidential administration.

Newsom no doubt wants someone who can win election in 2022. Justice Liu won retention on the California Supreme Court with a lopsided statewide majority in 2014. He is an exceptional speaker in small and large settings. His experience growing up in an immigrant family resonates with Californians everywhere. He is widely admired throughout the legal community, the Asian American community and beyond. And he would bring a robust network of people and organizations ready to mobilize themselves and others to support his election.

At this time of partisan division, an appointment based on integrity and expertise makes great sense. Justice Liu has served with distinction on the court. If he were willing to accept a new challenge, the people of California would greatly benefit from having someone of his experience and stature as our state’s top lawyer.

This story was originally published January 12, 2021 at 9:23 AM.