Liuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu*
I think this post by Adam Serwer on the imminent vote for cloture on the nomination of Professor Liu is probably spot on. I'm not sure there's anything more to add to that, but I'm personally not very optimistic about Professor Liu's chances of confirmation. I'm hopeful though that Democrats will use any filibuster of Professor Liu as leverage to push through other nominees, like how Bush pushed through Kavanaugh, Owens, etc.
* Reference.
SNARKY UPDATE #1: Well here's a trivia question. Which Bay Area law school is more likely to celebrate the appointment of one of its extended family members to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit? Hint.
UPDATE #2 [and moving up]: Well looks like it's over. Would have loved to have seen Professor Liu on the bench, but again, I hope there's a silver lining that maybe creates an impetus in Chairman Leahy and Harry Reid to move along other stalled nominees. [H/T: Anonymous].
* Reference.
SNARKY UPDATE #1: Well here's a trivia question. Which Bay Area law school is more likely to celebrate the appointment of one of its extended family members to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit? Hint.
UPDATE #2 [and moving up]: Well looks like it's over. Would have loved to have seen Professor Liu on the bench, but again, I hope there's a silver lining that maybe creates an impetus in Chairman Leahy and Harry Reid to move along other stalled nominees. [H/T: Anonymous].
Labels: Rabid Conservatives
posted by Armen Adzhemyan at 6:38 PM
25 Comments:
I am disturbed by politicization of the confirmation process by demogogues from both parties and don't believe any honest, substantive argument has been advanced against Prof. Liu's confirmation. That said Prof. Liu's participation in this politicization makes it hard to feel too bad for him. (See, e.g. his Op-Ed against the Roberts confirmation linked below.) In a certain moral sense, Liu's predicament is karma at work.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=alGK4Jy5eXwc&refer=columnist_liu-redirectoldpage
I'm not a democrat, but having just taken Go*dwin's contemporary Con Law seminar I learned that not only is he brilliant, but he's also a great human being. Rooting for him 100%, too bad there are roughly 45 senators who didn't get a chance to have him as a prof.
Since you like reading and are interested in this topic: http://volokh.com/2011/05/18/judge-goodwin-liu-and-the-downward-spiral/
McCain, L.Graham and Isakson just said they're filibustering.
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2011/05/key-senators-to-support-filibuster-of-goodwin-liu.html
I am having trouble seeing which seven Republicans are going to vote to end debate. Does anyone else see it?
it's looking grim for Liu. GOP senators who rarely filibuster judicial nominations have come out against Liu. According to The Legal Times blog, Liu's attack on Alito has left a bitter taste in the mouths of some senators. if there's anything good to come of this, maybe it will dissuade people who might want to be judges from talking trash. i bet that Liu deeply regrets going overboard rhetorically.
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2011/05/key-senators-to-support-filibuster-of-goodwin-liu.html
During his confirmation hearings, Professor Liu admitted that he regretted the remarks on then-Judge Alito. But what I don't know (and I don't have the time to track down) is whether Professor Liu called for the filibuster of Alito. We can agree or disagree on the merits of opposing a judicial nominee on philosophical/ideological grounds. But the question for these senators is whether it is appropriate to filibuster a nominee. And if the article I link to is correct, the filibuster is based on nothing more than a fear that Professor Liu may one day be nominated to the Supreme Court.
It's also funny that the vast majority of those who will vote to filibuster Professor Liu seemed content with having Dick Cheney rule that filibusters of judicial nominees was unconstitutional not too long ago. So whatever arguments that Lindsay Graham et al may offer for their hypocrisy, it strikes me as B.S.
didn't then-senator Obama support filibusters of Bush nominees, vote against cloture, and vote against Roberts and Alito? isn't Obams the first president in history to have filibustered a SCOTUS nominee?
"In January 2006, then-Sen. Obama joined 24 colleagues in a futile effort led by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., to filibuster the Supreme Court nomination of now-Justice Samuel Alito."
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/05/first-president-in-us-history-to-have-voted-to-filibuster-a-supreme-court-nominee-now-hopes-for-clea.html
Which proves what, exactly? That as a member of the Senate, said and did things differently than as President? Thanks for the news, I suppose.
*Obama
It proves that the republicans don't have a monopoly on judicial filibusters, and that the democrats don't have a monopoly on the moral high ground. It also suggests that what's happening to Liu might be less outrageous than it is typical.
it proves, for me, that hypocrisy abounds on both sides of the spectrum, and it means that for Liu or Obama to claim to be "shocked, shocked" at political tit for tat isn't terribly convincing. if i were a senator i'd vote for Liu in a heartbeat, but, c'mon, it's all in the game.
Kudos on The Wire reference. And I don't disagree. I just think the Obama example is not terribly persuasive because as an institution, the presidency requires different conduct than as 1/100th of a member of a 1/2 of the legislative body. This is probably a better example though.
How can someone so stupid that they had to go to a fake law school be a ninth circuit appointment? Embarrassing move by Obama.
8:20 might be onto something. Ed Chen finally got confirmed by the Senate, and he's a Boalt alum.
cloture failed. end of the line?
news wires are saying that Liu withdrew.
I don't get why people feel bad for him. It's his own fault for making a really stupid public comment about Samuel Alito. Whatever we think of the merit of his qualifications, it was his own stupidity that cost him the job.
wait 9:01, I'm sorry but you cannot just say that Liu's comments on Alito were "really stupid." You need to explain why. Unless you're simply referring to the lack of political calculation he exhibited.
Because in terms of the comments themselves, they were a pretty incisive and accurate (all of the comments were fair descriptions of actual Alito opinions/dissents). They were fully explained in the dozens of other pages of his report on Alito, which have not been much discussed.
In fact, I would reject even the claim that his arguments were politically foolish. Congressional obstructionists would have found something else on Liu, and unless you would have advised he avoid any criticism of conservatives (especially, pardon my french, a terrible monster of a judge who lacks concern for human, non-business petitioners), I don't know how those comments were stupid.
You may not see much mainstream pushback to the idea that the Alito comments were foolish (Liu himself claimed some regret), but I have always attributed this to the fact that liberals are punished for describing the conservative vision, rather than that these comments were actually stupid or even intemperate, let alone inaccurate.
9:23, I agree Prof. Liu's comments about Alito were neither political in tone nor stupid--they look to me to be a perceptive and accurate description of Alito's judicial philosophy and the boundaries of his empathy. But: (1) an Op Ed he wrote about Roberts WAS facially political and (2) his testimony regarding Alito, while not political in substance, was nevertheless a political activity conducted in service of the Democratic party.
I agree with the other commentators: live by the sword, die by the sword. Maybe I am way off base, but I always assumed the way an incredibly brilliant and successful law professor like Liu gets nominated over other incredibly brilliant and accomplished law professors is by political activity. I further assumed (again, without really knowing anything about the process) that Liu's attacks on recent Republican nominees were an example of such political activity. A service to the party and a show of loyalty that everyone understood would increase his chances of being nominated.
In other words, Prof. Liu was in the game. He put himself out there, took risks to get that nomination. Played a strong hand, but ended up overplaying it just a bit. It's disappointing for those of us who think he's a great guy who would have been a really good judge, but I don't think we have a right to decry the fact that his defeat was "political."
9:01 here, I meant really stupid in the sense that everyone is talking about: he did not think about the ramifications of his actions before speaking and paid a heavy price.
Just like others are saying better its really stupid because in this profession especially, if you do not play the game you get burned badly. Here we had a brilliant guy who could have made it all the way to SCOTUS if he had just made more calculated political decisions and moderated his political commentary in his writings (which most judges do to make it far).
For such a smart dude, I'm just shocked at how low his political IQ is.
I wish there was a "like" button beneath Tyler's post.
I <3 9:23
9:23, when you have the gall to tell someone he "cannot just say" what he did because he "needs to explain why" you'd better produce a well-reasoned, logically-sound argument with strong evidence backing up every single assertion. Otherwise you justifiably open yourself to ridicule. It is far more effective to just make the point you want to make rather than attempt dismiss the other point of view as invalid because it does not meet whatever aribtrary standard of proof you have personally conceived in your head.
You can't just say that Alito is "a terrible monster of a judge who lacks concern for human, non-business petitioners". You need "to explain why."
Apparently one can assert without evidence that the "conservative vision" obviously fits that description.
That's fine if you want to make that assertion. I support your right to say it.
But I'd argue that such proposition is harder to objectively defend than the notion, particularly with 20/20 hindsight, that Liu's comments were in some sense "stupid."
Hey 4:04, 9:23 here.
Sure, we could go back and forth on logical inferences and consistency or hypocrisy in critique, and your advice on effective point-making really blew my mind.
But let's skip all that because there's only one thing I want to focus on: my heartfelt thanks for your supporting my "right to say it." These last few nights, I have been without sleep, my words flailing in the deliberative wind, my right to assert falling in on itself. And then, boom, your support arrived and has propped me back up. I thank you.
... and anonymous posting carries the day again. Well done Nuts & Boalts. Well done.
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