Offshore Production and Safety Act of 2011

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I rise today to support the nomination of Professor Goodwin Liu's nomination to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Very simply, America deserves and needs the best of our legal profession on the bench, the best Americans on the bench. Goodwin Liu is an extraordinary American and an exceptional lawyer, and he will serve with distinction on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals if he is confirmed by the Senate, as I urge he should be.

He is qualified by reason not only of his remarkable intellect but also his professional experience, his life experiences, which are important to anyone who serves on the Federal bench. As demonstrating his intellect, he graduated with honors from Stanford University in 1991. He was a Rhodes scholar, graduating with honors also from Oxford. He then went to the Yale Law School, where he was editor of the Yale Law Journal, and clerked for two distinguished Federal judges, including Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

He has been a professor and a dean at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law. He has worked in private practice, including serving as a special assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Education. But his life has been about public service. Indeed, he served for 2 years at the Corporation for National Service, helping to begin the AmeriCorps National Service Program.

He has dedicated immense amounts of time to representing and serving the disadvantaged, including minority and low-income children in public schools, and he has received numerous awards, not only for his academic performance but also for that public service.

He brings to the bench potentially also life experience and diversity as an Asian American. There is no Asian-American member at present on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. There should be and Professor Liu ought to be that judge.

He has been endorsed by jurists across the political spectrum. Ken Starr, the former Watergate prosecutor, said about him that he has ``obvious intellect and legal talent.''

Ken Starr also highlighted Professor Liu's ``independence and openness to diverse viewpoints, as well as his ability to follow the facts and the law to their logical conclusion, whatever its political balance may be.''

That is a quality that is priceless in a jurist. It is to be valued on the Federal bench, it is to be sought, and it is the reason he has been endorsed, as well, by Clint Bolick, Bob Barr, Tom Campbell, John Hu, Richard Painter--the list could go on. But that list is simply reflective of that quality of the open-mindedness and willingness to listen that the Federal bench, and any bench, needs today.

He is supported by business leaders and law enforcement officials, including a bipartisan group of 27 former judges and prosecutors and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. Again, endorsements reflect quality.

I want to finish by talking about a couple of qualities that I think are particularly important. One of them is the willingness to admit error and recognize the need for acknowledging error, as Professor Liu did in the hearing I attended. By the way, he has had numerous hearings--an extensive review by this body. In that hearing most recently, he acknowledged statements that perhaps should have been said differently, could have been said better. We all, from time to time, commit those kinds of errors, but rarely do people have the courage to acknowledge them. Professor Liu is the kind of human being who searches for the best in himself, as well as in others. He has a quality of integrity I think is perhaps most important in a Federal judge, or any jurist, and I hope across the political spectrum in this body there will be support for Professor Liu when his nomination comes to a vote within the next couple of days.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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