Goodwin Liu is an Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court. He was nominated by Governor Jerry Brown and sworn into office in 2011, and retained by the electorate in 2014 and 2022.
Before joining the state’s highest court, Justice Liu was Professor of Law and Associate Dean at the UC Berkeley School of Law. His areas of expertise span constitutional law, education law and policy, and diversity in the legal profession.
He is an elected member and chair of the board of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is also an elected member of the American Law Institute and American Philosophical Society, in addition to having served on the board of numerous service organizations and academic institutions.
The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Justice Liu grew up in Sacramento and earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Stanford, master’s degrees in philosophy and physiology from Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, and JD from Yale. He clerked for Judge David Tatel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court.
His accomplished legal career also includes practicing at O’Melveny & Myers, serving in the U.S. Department of Education, and helping launch the AmeriCorps national service program.