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.