Goodwin Liu is a law professor at Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in constitutional law, education policy, civil rights, and the Supreme Court. He is also co-director of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity, a multidisciplinary research center at UC Berkeley devoted to civil rights issues in California and the nation.

Before joining the Boalt faculty in 2003, Professor Liu was an appellate litigator at O'Melveny & Myers in Washington, D.C. He clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during the 2000-01 term and for Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1998 to 1999. He also served as special assistant to the deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Education from 1999 to 2000, and as senior program officer for higher education at the Corporation for National Service (AmeriCorps) from 1993 to 1995.

Professor Liu is a member of the board of directors of the American Constitution Society, Chinese for Affirmative Action, and the ACLU of Northern California. He graduated with distinction from Stanford University, was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, and received his law degree from Yale.