The Living Consequences

As anticipated by my lengthier blog post this morning, Professor Goodwin Liu’s nomination to be a federal appellate judge has been successfully filibustered by Senate Republicans opposed to his judicial philosophy.

The vote was 52-43 in favor of voting on the nomination, but the motion to invoke cloture and take an up-0r-down vote on Liu required the support of at least 60 senators.

In all likelihood, this vote means that Liu’s nomination is effectively dead. This was almost certainly a foregone conclusion, and the cloture motion here was being used by Senate Democrats as a way of putting Republican opponents on record as filibustering this nomination before next year’s elections.

For more on Liu’s nomination, including the role of our organization and its PBS documentary, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, see here.

At this hour, the U.S. Senate is meeting in executive session to debate the nomination of Goodwin Liu to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

If Liu’s supporters are able to muster 60 votes in favor of cloture, which is scheduled to be voted on around 2:00pm ET, this will end the threatened filibuster and result in an up-or-down vote on the nomination itself.

The situation does not look promising for Professor Liu, as three key senators who believe that filibusters should be rare—John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.)—have said they will vote to extend debate indefinitely, thus filibustering the nomination.

After the jump, I discuss the controversial video of Liu speaking at one of our events, and what role it does (and should) play in his nomination.

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“Quick Takes” offers a mix of news, opinion, and research related to race, privilege, and inequality.

Today’s “Quick Takes” includes Cornel West on Barack Obama, CNN anchor Don Lemon coming out of the closet, legacy admissions at Harvard, discrimination against farmers and Ivy League grads, and Goodwin Liu’s nomination for the Ninth Circuit.

Readers are encouraged to share these stories and to offer their thoughts at the end of the post.

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“Quick Takes” offers a mix of news, opinion, and research related to race, privilege, and inequality.

Today’s “Quick Takes” includes the the legacy of the Freedom Riders, an online tool for tracing African-American heritage, the significance of President Obama’s birth certificate, an update on Goodwin Liu’s nomination, and new research on race and health.

Readers are encouraged to share these stories and to offer their thoughts at the end of the post.

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“Quick Takes” offers a mix of news, opinion, and research related to race, privilege, and inequality.

Today’s “Quick Takes” includes racial profiling, textbooks with offensive stereotypes, movement on the Goodwin Liu nomination, and our film being screened in the Dominican Republic.

Readers are encouraged to share these stories and to offer their thoughts at the end of the post.

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The White House announced late yesterday that President Obama has re-nominated Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Professor Liu’s nomination became controversial when it was discovered that he had addressed the subject of reparations for slavery on a panel following a special screening of our documentary, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, in Washington, D.C. in 2008. Liu’s scholarship has also drawn considerable attention for its intellectual heft and for what conservative senators have declared to be a left-leaning philosophical approach to the law.

Professor Liu was originally nominated to the appellate judgeship in February, and passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on a 12-7 vote. His nomination expired, however, when the Senate recessed in August without having held a full vote.

Professor Liu’s nomination, along with several others who were re-nominated yesterday, must now pass the Senate Judiciary Committee again. A committee meeting has been scheduled for Thursday at which these nominations will be discussed.

President Obama’s nomination of controversial law professor Goodwin Liu to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has been blocked by Senate Republicans and returned to the White House.

Professor Liu became the subject of controversy in late March, in part due to remarks he made on a panel convened to discuss our documentary, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. That evening, in response to the topic of reparations for slavery, Liu observed that any effort to compensate for our nation’s history of slavery and racial discrimination would inevitably require trade-offs which would diminish the privileges enjoyed by people who benefit from that history today.

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