Justice Liu on judicial restraint

Justice Goodwin Liu discussed the work of judges at Vanderbilt Law School last week.  According to the law school’s website, the program — called “From Filibuster to the California Supreme Court” — touched on numerous topics, including Republican senators blocking a vote on Liu’s nomination to the Ninth Circuit.  His comments on the philosophy of judging will reinforce past opinions of him as a moderate jurist.  “The judicial function is inherently conservative,” Liu is quoted as saying, “backward looking, reliant on precedent, defers to authority.”  He also said that he votes against his personal views “every single day.”  “I may think something is terribly wrong, but there’s nothing I can do about it — someone else wrote the statute and it’s my job to apply it.”