WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans fiercely criticized President Barack Obama’s choice for a seat on a San Francisco-based federal appellate court Friday in an intensifying test of his ability to install an unabashed liberal.
At a divisive confirmation hearing, nominee Goodwin Liu tried to deflect the criticism by assuring lawmakers his personal views would “never have a role” in his opinions if confirmed to a seat on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Republicans threw back at Liu his sharp criticism of two Supreme Court justices, Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito, when they were nominees. GOP senators told Liu he had no judicial experience and said they worried he would give the government sweeping powers over Americans’ lives.
Democrats countered that Republicans were applying a double-standard because they have voted for some GOP nominees who were conservative activists who assured senators they would not bring their personal views to the bench.
Sens. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said they were incensed at Liu’s remarks in opposition to Alito’s nomination.
Liu, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, had said Alito’s vision was an America “where police may shoot and kill an unarmed boy, . . . where federal agents may point guns at ordinary citizens during a raid, even after no sign of resistance, . . . where the FBI may install a camera where you sleep, . . . where a black man may be sentenced to death by an all-white jury for killing a white man, absent . . . analysis showing discrimination.”
Kyl called those comments “vicious and emotionally and racially charged.”
Liu said he used “unnecessarily colorful language” and added, “I have the highest regard for Justice Alito’s career.” He said those remarks followed a 14-page analysis of Alito’s rulings.
Liu said Roberts “has an extraordinarily distinguished record.”
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the committee, fumed that Kyl’s comments were “outrageous.”
