California Supreme Court nominee Goodwin Liu

Age: 40

Occupation: UC Berkeley law professor; expert on constitutional law, education policy, civil rights and the U.S. Supreme Court

Education: Bachelor’s degree in biology from Stanford University; master’s from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar; graduate of Yale Law School, where he was a member of the Yale Law Journal


Personal background: Son of Taiwanese immigrants. He was born in Georgia, grew up in Sacramento and has a history of public service. Before joining the Berkeley Law faculty in 2003, Liu was an appellate litigator at O’Melveny & Myers in Washington, D.C. He clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and for Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

-- Maura Dolan