Later today, California’s Commission on Judicial Appointments will hold a two-hour hearing on the nomination of Goodwin Liu to the state supreme court. Goodwin is widely expected to be confirmed shortly thereafter.

Goodwin’s ascension to his state’s highest court will end an 18 month saga that began when President Obama nominated him to a federal appellate judgeship on the basis of his widespread support throughout the legal community — including numerous leading conservatives. Clinton inquisitor Ken Starr called Goodwin an “extraordinarily qualified nominee” who will serve as a judge “with great distinction.” Torture memo author John Yoo called Goodwin a “very well qualified” nominee who will be a “good judge on the bench.”

But Goodwin is also very young. And brilliant. And a former Supreme Court clerk. Senate Republicans soon envisioned a future where the Judge Liu of 2010 became the Justice Liu of 2014, and they began combing through Goodwin’s prolific scholarship searching for nuggets that could be taken out of context to discredit the nominee. Suddenly, Goodwin’s article disagreeing with a prominent liberal’s recipe for judicially-created welfare rights became proof that Goodwin actually supported a judicial takeover of welfare. An op-ed making the utterly banal point that a conservative interest group used the terms “free enterprise,”‘ “private ownership of property,” and “limited government” as code words for an ideological agenda became proof that he wants to turn America into “Communist-run China.”

As I wrote in the Los Angeles Times shortly after Goodwin withdrew his nomination, two heartbreaking lessons emerged from Goodwin’s failed confirmation:

Future presidents of both parties will learn that if they nominate someone with a body of published work — no matter how moderate — that work will inevitably contain out-of-context statements that can be used to embarrass the nominee and the White House. Thus, the lesson for presidents is clear: Don’t nominate anyone who actually has had something to say about the Constitution.

Brilliant young lawyers will learn equally harsh lessons: Keep your mouth shut, don’t write anything down and never, ever say anything critical of a powerful official, even if the criticism is true. Because presidents will no longer nominate anyone who speaks out, the brightest, most promising legal minds will learn to keep silent.

The truth, however, is that this has already happened. When I was halfway through my second year of law school, I wrote a law review note arguing that the Constitution guarantees all children a minimally adequate education. The piece won an award, but looking back at it now, many of its arguments are amateurish. Some of them fail to consider important veins of scholarship or lines of caselaw, and other parts lack a manageable limiting principle. In other words, it is exactly the kind of piece one would expect an inexperienced law student to produce as they were struggling to make sense of the rich complexity that is American constitutional law. I no longer agree with many of the arguments I wrote in that piece, but writing it and going through the very lengthy process of preparing it for publication was one of the formative periods in my legal education. It taught me how to write. It taught me how to make a difficult argument. And, in retrospect, it taught me that sometimes an argument that you desperately want to be true just isn’t going to work.

Shortly after I finished the first draft, a professor took me aside and told me not to publish the piece because, if I did, I would reveal the fact that I have political views and disqualify myself from ever serving in a Senate-confirmed position. I did not take his advice and I do not regret it, as I continue to believe that I am better off speaking openly than I am holding my tongue in the hopes that some day the President of the United States will tap me on the shoulder. The fact remains, however, that I had to choose when I was just 27 years old with no real experience in the legal profession whether I ever wanted to be a judge someday.

I know many people who were faced with the same decision and reached the opposite conclusion. A dear friend of mine chose not to apply for a job at a leading women’s rights organization because she was too scared of the future implications for her career. A talented colleague turned down an offer to do important research on corporate influence on the law because he was scared of leaving a paper trail. I myself once advised someone not to publish an article because I thought it would doom her in a future confirmation hearing. None of these people is over the age of 33.

I do not normally use my perch at ThinkProgress to vent my own career anxieties. Or refer to public figures that I know personally by their first names. Or write in the first person. I also don’t plan to make a habit of it. But the standard that now prevails in judicial confirmation fights — where a nominee is only as good as the most embarrassing statement that can be taken out of context and turned against them — is a cancer upon my profession. Everyone I know who works at the intersection of law and politics has been forced to decide whether to speak or keep silent at some point in their career, and a shockingly large number of them have learned to simply glue their mouths shut.

This is why Goodwin’s impending confirmation is such an important event. It is proof that someone who has spoken frequently and openly can still achieve the highest echelons of the legal profession. And it is proof that talented lawyers with dreams of judicial service do not need to hide themselves in corporate law firms laboring endlessly to never offend an important person. Our federal confirmations process remains deeply broken, but Justice Goodwin Liu will be a constant reminder that silence is not the only path to relevance.

The Supreme Court held nearly 70 years ago that laws forcing people to say things against their will violate the First Amendment. This is the reason why George H.W. Bush-appointed Judge Sam Sparks temporarily suspended a new Texas law that requires doctors to tell their patients medically-irrelevant information, such as stating that the fetus has a heartbeat and discussing “the presence of external members and internal organs.”

Moreover, the Texas law doesn’t simply force doctors to speak against their will, it also places a crushing burden of disclosure on rape victims. As Judge Sparks explains:

Section 171.012(a)(5) requires a pregnant woman to complete and sign a specified election form that certifies her understanding of many of the Act’s various requirements. The most troubling aspect of the required certification is paragraph (6), which reads:

6) I UNDERSTAND THAT I AM REQUIRED BY LAW TO HEAR AN EXPLANATION OF THE SONOGRAM IMAGES UNLESS I CERTIFY INWRITING TO ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:

_____ I AM PREGNANT AS A RESULT OF A SEXUAL ASSAULT, INCEST, OR OTHER VIOLATION OF THE TEXAS PENAL CODE THAT HAS BEEN REPORTED TO LAW ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITIES OR THAT HAS NOT BEEN REPORTED BECAUSE I REASONABLY BELIEVE THAT DOING SO WOULD PUT ME AT RISK OF RETALIATION RESULTING IN SERIOUS BODILY INJURY. . . .

The Court need not belabor the obvious by explaining why, for instance, women who are pregnant as a result of sexual assault or incest may not wish to certify that fact in writing, particularly if they are too afraid of retaliation to even report the matter to police. There is no sufficiently powerful government interest to justify compelling speech of this sort, nor is the Act sufficiently tailored to advance such an interest.

Unsurprisingly, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) wasted no time in attacking the Court’s decision, but Perry provided no explanation for why he thinks the Constitution allows doctors to be conscripted into anti-abortion advocacy. If Texas can force doctors to effectively try to talk women out of getting an abortion, then there is nothing preventing the federal government from requiring all patients seeking treatment to first listen to a 10 minute lecture on the virtues of Obamacare — or, for that matter, preventing a Democratic Congress from forcing Perry himself to issue a public statement touting his undying love of massive tax hikes on the rich.

In other words, Sparks’ decision isn’t just correct, it is obviously correct. Rick Perry has no right to force people to become mouthpieces for his own agenda.

After months of protest from minority groups, voting rights advocates, and Democratic U.S. senators, the Justice Department declined to pre-clear South Carolina’s new voter identification law Monday, putting it on hold until South Carolina can provide further information on the law, the Greenville News reported Tuesday:

South Carolina’s new voter ID law will be on hold until the state can provide more information to the federal Department of Justice, which says it needs more specifics to ensure that the new law doesn’t disenfranchise voters. [...]

In a letter to the attorney general, the voting rights chief asked questions including how many registered voters don’t have a state driver’s license or ID and how they will be notified of the new law’s requirements, what types of evidence will be accepted to prove a voter’s identity and how those who can’t reasonably secure an ID will still be allowed to vote.

Under Section Five of Voting Rights Act (VRA), southern states like South Carolina must have election laws pre-cleared, meaning the laws cannot take effect until the Justice Department approves them on grounds that they will not discriminate against minority voters. By putting it on hold, Justice is asking South Carolina for further proof that its law will not disenfranchise the 178,000 voters in the state who do not have valid IDs — a disproportionate share of whom are racial minorities.

South Carolina’s Attorney General’s Office insists they have the answers to those questions, but as Ian Millhiser has noted, it’s unlikely that any of the voter ID laws taking effect in Republican-controlled states could survive the scrutiny of the VRA, which forbids both laws that specifically target minority voters and those that have a greater impact on minority voters than others.

Instead of fitting laws into the VRA, however, Republicans are beginning to target the law itself. Conservatives on the Supreme Court weakened the law in 2009, making it easier for districts to “bail out” of the Section Five pre-clearance requirement, and the state of Arizona recently filed a lawsuit challenging Section Five altogether. The Court’s actions in 2009 hint that it may go even farther if it gets a chance to rule on Arizona’s challenge to the law’s constitutionality. If the Court strikes down Section Five, discriminatory voter ID laws could still be challenged in a federal lawsuit, they just wouldn’t be subject to pre-clearance.

Late last week at a campaign stop in South Carolina, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) revived a debunked conservative talking point about so-called “anchor babies” — a derogatory term for the American-born children of undocumented immigrants who are full citizens under the 14th Amendment.

But Bachmann, who professes to revere the Constitution, suggested that these American citizens with foreign parents are somehow here “illegally” and that the “anchor baby” problem should be dealt with through legislation:

Bachmann, who was also asked about her position on illegal immigration, told the audience she thinks it is possible through legislation to stop the “anchor baby” problem of children born to mothers living illegally in the United States. When that happens she said, “A whole new set of implications arise for the United States. I do not believe that the American taxpayer should be paying benefits to people who are in the United States illegally.”

Presumably the legislative remedy Bachmann is referring to is the Birthright Citizenship Act, an unconstitutional bill that Bachmann co-sponsored in the previous Congress. The 14th Amendment provides that “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States . . . are citizens of the United States,” with a narrow exception for children of ambassadors and other people who aren’t subject to U.S. law. Bachmann’s bill openly defies this constitutional guarantee by declaring that the children of undocumented immigrants no longer enjoy birthright citizenship.

Additionally, there is, in fact, no “anchor baby” problem. The term reflects conservative paranoia that women come from different countries and intentionally give birth in the United States to try to “anchor” themselves in this country. As Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) once put it, “People come here to have babies. They come here to drop a child. It’s called ‘drop and leave.’”

As many experts have pointed out, this is a baseless and senseless concern — only 9 percent of undocumented immigrants had children shortly after arriving, and undocumented parents with American children have no easier path to citizenship and are still subject to forced deportation. That’s a pretty flimsy anchor.

Nevertheless, conservatives are going to extraordinary lengths to punish undocumented immigrants through harsh legislation. Bachmann appeared at the event with South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) and Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC), two conservatives who the Washington Post points out have been able to use their own race as a cover to go after immigrants while avoiding accusations of racism.

Justice Ginsburg During Her Time As Director of the ACLU Women's Rights Project

Ginsburg said that to practice for her Senate confirmation hearings, White House staffers in mock hearings grilled her on her work for the ACLU. During those mock hearings she told them: “There’s nothing you can do to get me to bad mouth the ACLU.”

Such grilling, though, did not happen, she said. She was confirmed 96-3.

“Today, my ACLU connection would probably disqualify me,” she said.

It’s worth noting exactly what kind of work Justice Ginsburg did for the ACLU before she was confirmed to the federal bench. As director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, Ginsburg was literally the single most important women’s rights attorney in American history. She authored the brief in Reed v. Reed that convinced a unanimous Supreme Court to hold for the very first time that the Constitution’s guarantee of Equal Protection applies to women. And her brief in Craig v. Boren convinced the Court to hand down its very first decision holding that gender discrimination laws are subject to heightened constitutional scrutiny. It is possible that modern doctrines preventing gender discrimination would simply not exist if Ruth Bader Ginsburg hadn’t done the work she did for the ACLU.

And yet, in today’s era of rampant right-wing filibusters, that alone would disqualify her for a seat on the federal bench.

Taxpayers for Justice, an organization of death penalty opponents, is in the process of introducing and collecting signatures for a ballot initiative that would abolish the state’s death penalty, which has crunched the state’s budget while failing to actually carry out executions. The initiative, known as the Safe California Act, would convert existing death row inmates to Life Without Parole (LWOP) sentences and, if approved, will appear on the 2012 ballot.

The initiative is based on studies that have proven California’s existing death penalty law ineffective and overly costly, as the largest and most expensive death row in the country has cost the state $4 billion while only executing 13 inmates since 1978. More death row inmates have died from natural causes than have been executed in California, where the last execution took place six years ago. Converting existing death sentences to LWOP would save the state $184 million each year, according to a study released in June.

Taxpayers for Justice spokesperson James Clark told ThinkProgress that money saved from ending the death penalty could be redirected to local law enforcement efforts to solve murder and rape cases, more than half of which he said remain unsolved:

Everyone agrees the system as it stands is non-functional since no one is being executed, and any attempt to make it functional will put California’s budget further in the hole, so the only solution is to replace the death penalty completely. [...] California is wasting billions on just a select few murderers while nearly half of all murders are unsolved — and more than half of all rapes are unsolved. Ending the death penalty and diverting those resources to local law enforcement is a smart and necessary public safety measure.

As ThinkProgress reported in March, California’s most prolific death penalty judge agrees with the coalition. Former Superior Court Judge Donald McCartin, who earned the nickname “the hanging judge” for the numerous death sentences he issued, wrote an editorial in the Los Angeles Times calling on the state to abolish the death penalty to help close its $25 billion budget gap.

Earlier this year, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) vetoed the construction of a new $356 million death row facility at San Quentin State Prison.

Once the initiative is filed, the coalition will need to collect roughly 750,000 signatures to get it approved and placed on the November 2012 ballot, an effort Clark said he expects will succeed with ease. As for the measure’s success, the group is banking on a combination of recent polling showing Californians growing increasingly opposed to the death penalty and high voter turnout among women and racial minorities, two groups more likely to oppose to the death penalty, due to the presidential election.