Nominated by Governor Jerry Brown, Justice Liu was 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 primary areas of expertise are constitutional law, education law and policy, and diversity in the legal profession. Justice Liu continues to teach constitutional law as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School, and Stanford Law School.
He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, The American Law Institute, and the American Philosophical Society. In 2023, he was elected Chair of the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He also serves on the Council of the American Law Institute, on the Board of Directors of the James Irvine Foundation, and as President of the Yale University Council. He has previously served on the Board of Trustees of Stanford University, the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Science, Technology, and Law, the Board of Directors of the National Women’s Law Center, and the California Commission on Access to Justice.
The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Justice Liu grew up in Sacramento and attended public schools. He earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Stanford, a masters degree in philosophy and physiology from Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, and a law degree 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. He has also worked in the litigation practice of O’Melveny & Myers, served as Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, and helped launch the AmeriCorps national service program as Senior Program Officer for Higher Education at the Corporation for National Service.
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