Southern California Student Chapter
Speakers:
Speakers:
University of Southern California, Gould School of Law
Partner, Latham & Watkins LLP
Gregory Garre is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Latham & Watkins and Global Chair of the firm's Supreme Court and Appellate Practice Group. He recently served as the 44th Solicitor General of the United States. As Solicitor General, he was the federal government's top lawyer before the Supreme Court and was responsible for overseeing the government's litigation in the federal appellate courts. Prior to his nomination by the President and unanimous confirmation as Solicitor General by the Senate, he served as Principal Deputy Solicitor General from 2005 to 2008, and then as Acting Solicitor General. In addition, he served as an Assistant to the Solicitor General from 2000 to 2004. He is the only person to have held all of those positions within the Office of the Solicitor General.
Mr. Garre has argued 29 cases before the Supreme Court, including two cases during the current term, and has served as counsel of record in hundreds of cases before the Court. During the past term, he won each of the cases he argued as Solicitor General, including the landmark case of Ashcroft v. Iqbal, which clarified the gateway requirements for civil litigation in the federal courts, as well as FCC v. Fox Television Stations, and Winter v. NRDC. He has also argued and briefed cases involving a wide array of other nationally important matters, including in the areas of administrative law, alien tort statute, antitrust, business and employment law, education, environmental law, First Amendment, intellectual property, international law, media and telecommunications, separation of powers and voting rights.
Mr. Garre has also successfully argued numerous cases before the federal courts of appeals, including some of the most significant cases heard by the appellate courts in recent years. And, as Acting Solicitor General, he successfully argued on behalf of the government in the first adversarial appeal heard by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review in its 30-year history.
Mr. Garre has received numerous awards for his public service, including the Attorney General's Medallion for his service as Solicitor General and the Navy's Distinguished Public Service Award-the Navy's highest civilian honor-for his successful argument in Winter v. NRDC, which secured a path-marking Supreme Court ruling overturning an order that restrained critically important naval exercises. He has also received the Attorney General's Distinguished Service Award, the Attorney General's Award for Excellence in Furthering Interests of US National Security, and additional honors from the Department of Justice for his work on nationally important litigation matters.
In November 2009, Mr. Garre was named to Washingtonian Magazine's list of top Supreme Court lawyers. In 2006, he was named to The American Lawyer's "Fab 50" list of top litigators under the age of 45 expected to be "leading the field for years to come." And in 2005, he was named to Chambers USA's list of leading appellate litigators in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Garre received his JD degree with high honors from the George Washington University Law School, where he served as editor-in-chief of the law review and was selected to Order of the Coif, and his BA degree cum laude from Dartmouth College, where he was a Rufus Choate Scholar. Following his graduation from law school, he served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, and to Judge Anthony J. Scirica of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Mr. Garre is a member of the advisory board of the Georgetown University Law School Supreme Court Institute and of the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court. He has taught constitutional law and Supreme Court practice for many years at the George Washington University Law School. He has testified before Congress and speaks frequently on issues related to the Supreme Court and appellate practice.
Associate Justice, California Supreme Court
Justice Goodwin Liu is an Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court. He was confirmed to office by a unanimous vote of the California Commission on Judicial Appointments on August 31, 2011, following his appointment by Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr. on July 26, 2011. The Governor administered the oath of office to Justice Liu in a public ceremony in Sacramento, California on September 1, 2011.
Before joining the state’s highest court, Justice Liu was Professor of Law at the UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall). His primary areas of expertise are constitutional law, education law and policy, and the U.S. Supreme Court. He has published widely on these subjects in books, law reviews, and the general media.
The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Justice Liu grew up in Sacramento, where he attended public schools. He went to Stanford University and earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1991. He attended Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship and earned a masters degree in philosophy and physiology. Upon returning to the United States, he went to Washington D.C. to help launch the AmeriCorps national service program and worked for two years as a senior program officer at the Corporation for National Service.
Justice Liu graduated from Yale Law School in 1998, becoming the first in his family to earn a law degree. He clerked for Judge David Tatel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then worked as Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, where he developed and coordinated K-12 education policy. He went on to clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during the October 2000 Term. In 2001, he joined the appellate litigation practice of O’Melveny & Myers in Washington, D.C., and worked on an array of antitrust, white collar, insurance, product liability, and pro bono matters.
Justice Liu is a prolific and influential scholar. He has published articles on constitutional law and education policy in the California Law Review, Michigan Law Review, NYU Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and Yale Law Journal, among others. His 2006 article, “Education, Equality, and National Citizenship,” won the Steven S. Goldberg Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Education Law, conferred by the Education Law Association. Justice Liu is also a popular and acclaimed teacher. In 2009, he received UC Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award, the university’s most prestigious honor for individual excellence in teaching. He earned tenure at Boalt Hall in 2008 and was promoted to Associate Dean. The Boalt Hall Class of 2009 selected him as the faculty commencement speaker.
Justice Liu serves on the Council of the American Law Institute, on the Board of Directors of the James Irvine Foundation, and on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Science, Technology, and Law. He has previously served on the Board of Trustees of Stanford University and the board of directors of the American Constitution Society, the National Women’s Law Center, and the Public Welfare Foundation. In 2008, he was elected to the American Law Institute. He has also served as a faculty advisor to the California College Prep Academy, a public charter school co-founded by UC Berkeley and Aspire Public Schools.
