Goodwin Liu's America
Chinese Communism coming to America
By Theodore H. Frank, president of the Center for Class Action Fairness.
President Obama's nominee for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is Goodwin Liu. I oppose the nomination of 39-year-old Berkeley Professor Goodwin Liu to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and I urge the Senate to reject it.
In 2005, Goodwin Liu spoke out against the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court because of Roberts's support for "free enterprise," "private ownership of property," and "limited government"—demonstrating nothing more than the bubble that a twenty-first century left-wing law professor lives in that would treat such fundamental principles of America as "code words" worthy of condemnation.
This alone is sufficient, by itself, to disqualify Liu from this new position to which he has been nominated. The man who speaks out against private ownership of property does not deserve a lifetime Article III appointment.
Mr. Liu should also be rejected by the Senate because he stands for an extremist view of the Constitution and the role of the courts. The judiciary, in Liu's words, is not bound by the text of the Constitution or the commands of the legislature, but by "socially situated modes of reasoning" and "culturally and historically contingent meanings of particular social goods in our own society."
It is a view of judicial supremacy: Where legislatures have failed to affirmatively act in ways that foster the "evolution of welfare rights," courts are to step in and act as both a legislature and an executive branch to allocate funding to schools or otherwise "leverage" the expansion of existing social programs.
Goodwin Liu's America is a land in which "justice" means judges remedying "societal discrimination" regardless of the consequences on innocent people; where 20th century immigrants to the United States are "responsible" for the crimes of 19th century slave-owners; where states would not be allowed to exercise the will of the people in punishing murderers with capital punishment; where racial quotas are not only not forbidden, but required.
America is a better and freer nation than Goodwin Liu thinks. Yet in the current state of the Ninth Circuit, his rigid ideology will further tip the scales of justice against the kind of country America is and ought to be.
The Ninth Circuit is a court that was one vote away from striking down the Pledge of Allegiance; regularly abuses the law to disregard states' wishes to impose capital punishment; has ordered California to release 25% of its prisoners; has forbidden Los Angeles from enforcing laws against sleeping on sidewalks; has said it has seen no reason why animals should not be allowed to sue the federal government; held an ex-police officer could sue his employer for firing him for running a porn site in his uniform; said that gun manufacturers could be held civilly liable for the shooting sprees of the mentally ill.
Congress should be insisting that President Obama take steps to rectify the imbalance already present on the Ninth Circuit, rather than exacerbating it. No justice would be better than this injustice. washingtonexaminer.com |
