Goodwin Liu

Justice Goodwin Liu is an Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court. Before joining the court in 2011, he was a tenured professor and associate dean at UC Berkeley School of Law, specializing in constitutional law and education policy.

The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Justice Liu grew up in Sacramento. He went to Stanford University and earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1991. He attended Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship and earned a master’s degree in philosophy and physiology. From 1993 to 1995, he served as a Senior Program Officer at the Corporation for National Service in Washington, D.C., helping to launch the AmeriCorps national service program.

Justice Liu graduated from Yale Law School in 1998, becoming the first in his family to earn a law degree. He clerked for Judge David Tatel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then worked as Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, where he developed and coordinated K-12 education policy. He went on to clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during the October 2000 term.

Justice Liu is an influential scholar and an acclaimed teacher. In 2009, he received UC Berkeley’s highest award for excellence in teaching. He continues to teach constitutional law at Harvard Law School. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Law Institute.

Justice Liu is Chair-Elect of the Board of Directors for the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and President of the Yale University Council, and serves on the governing board of the American Law Institute. He has previously served on the Board of Trustees of Stanford University, the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Science, Technology, and Law, and the Board of Directors of the National Women’s Law Center and the Public Welfare Foundation.