Faculty Profiles
general • courses • teaching evaluations • cv • publications
Goodwin Liu
Title: Associate Dean and Professor of Law
Office: 443 Boalt Hall (North Addition)
Tel: 510-642-7509
Fax: 510-643-2673
Email Address: gliu@law.berkeley.edu
FSU Contact: Teresa Moran
Goodwin Liu joined the Berkeley Law faculty in 2003. His primary areas of expertise are constitutional law, education policy, civil rights, and the Supreme Court. Along with Dean Christopher Edley, Jr., Professor Liu is Co-Director of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity, and Diversity, a multidisciplinary think tank on civil rights law and policy.
Professor Liu's recent work includes "Keeping Faith with the Constitution" (2009) (with Pamela S. Karlan and Christopher H. Schroeder); "Rethinking Constitutional Welfare Rights" in Stanford Law Review (2008); "History Will Be Heard: An Appraisal of the Seattle/Louisville Decision" in Harvard Law & Policy Review (2008); "Improving Title I Funding Equity Across States, Districts, and Schools," in Iowa Law Review (2008); "Seattle and Louisville" in California Law Review (2007); "Education, Equality, and National Citizenship" in Yale Law Journal (2006); and "Interstate Inequality in Educational Opportunity" in New York University Law Review (2006). In 2007, his work won the Education Law Association's Steven S. Goldberg Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Education Law. In 2009, Professor Liu won the UC Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award, the university's most prestigious award for excellence in teaching.
Professor Liu is a frequent commentator on constitutional law and education policy in general media including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer, and National Public Radio. In addition, he has testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, the California Assembly Education Committee, and the California Assembly and Senate Judiciary Committees.
Before joining the Boalt faculty, Professor Liu was an appellate litigator at O'Melveny & Myers in Washington. He clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and for Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He also served as special assistant to the deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Education and as senior program officer for higher education at the Corporation for National Service (AmeriCorps). Professor Liu recently served on the education policy and agency review teams of the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition.
Professor Liu, a Rhodes Scholar, serves on the Board of Trustees of Stanford University and is Chair of the Board of Directors of the American Constitution Society. He also serves on the boards of National Women's Law Center, the Public Welfare Foundation, and the Alliance for Excellent Education. He was elected to the American Law Institute in 2008.
Education:
B.S., Stanford University (1991)M.A., Oxford University (1993)
J.D., Yale Law School (1998)
