GOP Blocks Judicial Nominee Liu

Setting a new precedent, Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked the nomination of President Obama’s nominee to a high-profile federal appellate court, formally reversing their past opposition to filibusters for judicial nominations.

On a 52-43 vote, law professor Goodwin Liu fell 8 votes short of the 60 needed to overcome the GOP filibuster to his nomination -- the first time ever that Republicans had successfully filibustered a judicial nomination. All but one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), opposed ending debate on Liu’s nomination to the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

The Liu nomination, even more so than Obama’s two picks for the Supreme Court in 2009 and 2010, prompted the full ideological rhetoric that has been commonplace in judicial nomination battles for the past 25 years.

Democrats praised Liu’s life story -- the son of Taiwanese immigrants who became a Rhodes scholar and Supreme Court clerk -- as an example of the American dream.

Republicans, however, excoriated Liu’s writings while serving as a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, saying he adopted a legal standard of “empathy” that encouraged judges to try to view cases through the perspective of the people appearing before them rather than through a strict reading of the law.