Pioneering Chinese- American judge
Laura Cha- Yu Liu was the first Chinese- American woman to become a judge in state history, the first Chinese- American elected to public office in Cook County, and the first Asian- American to serve on the Illinois Appellate Court.
Relatives and friends say she was much more.
Born to immigrant parents, her first language was Mandarin. She started school speaking little English but ended up as class valedictorian. “She went to a high school of 2,000 kids, and she was the only Asian kid in the whole school,” said her husband, Michael Kasper.
In court, Justice Liu was a strong advocate for interpreter services for immigrants and people with limited English who might otherwise have been overwhelmed. A world traveler, she went to India on her honeymoon. She safaried in Africa. After her breast cancer diagnosis five years ago, she won election to be a Cook County Circuit Court judge.
Despite chemotherapy, she kept going. “I put on my wig, put on my eyebrows, lots of blush, happy face, get out of bed and went to work,” she told the Chicago Lawyer in 2014.
When she wanted to introduce her 7- year- old daughter to Paris, she downplayed the effects of chemo. “I’ll sleep it off on the plane,” she said.
So last year, “We took Sophie to Paris,” said her husband.
“I am so proud of her,” he said of his wife.
Justice Liu, 49, died Friday of breast cancer.
Her death drew condolences from Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “As the first Asian-- American justice to serve on the Illinois Appellate Court, Judge Liu broke barriers and blazed new trails of opportunity,” he said in a prepared statement. “The courage, grace and dignity with which she faced her illness served as a true inspiration.”
Justice Liu’s husband, also a lawyer, successfully defended Emanuel during a residency challenge when he ran for mayor.
On the Illinois Appellate court, “It was a joy for me to work with her,” said Justice Maureen E. Connors. “She was amazingly smart, dignified, classy; a wonderful writer, which we need in this job.
“It’s like she had every- thing. She had a beautiful family; she was a very accomplished woman.”
“She was very kind, too,” Connors said. “I admired something on her desk one day — a coffee cup with U. S. Supreme Court rulings on it. A few days later, she had one for me.”
Laura Liu was born in Carbondale, where her parents were exchange students at Southern Illinois University. Her father, Yih- Wu Liu, had left China with his family, anti- Communist partisans loyal to Chiang Kai- Shek. Her mother, Becky Liu, fled China as a youngster ahead of Japanese forces and was raised in the Chinatown com- munity munity in Saigon Saigon.
When her parents graduated from college, the Lius moved to Ohio, where her father worked as an economics professor at Youngstown State University. Laura Liu went to Youngstown State for college and graduated law school at the University of Cincinnati.
A law internship brought her to Chicago, where she and Michael Kasper met in 1994 at the University Club. They dated briefly. A decade later, “We ran into one another in court, and I was smart enough not to let her out of my sight ever again,” he said. “I took one look at her and I fell in love.” A former special counsel to House Speaker Mike Madigan, he is general counsel and treasurer for the Democratic Party of Illinois. Michael Kasper also served as a House prosecutor in the impeachment trial of Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
For nearly 20 years, Justice Liu worked as a litigator, mostly on employment law and health care cases.
As a Circuit Court judge, she served in the Chancery Division, where she was responsible for a 7,000- case docket, including many foreclosure proceedings from the 2008200 mortgage crisis.
SheS had a special interest in languagel barriers, resulting ing from the way she saw her parents treated because of theirt Chinese accents, her husbandhus said. If someone in courtcou was struggling to understandder the proceedings, she’dshe say, “‘ We’re going to waitwai for an interpreter.”
The state Supreme Court appointed her to the Illinois Appellate Court, where she wrote the opinion in a groundbreaking case. It involved an estranged couple and control of fertilized eggs created during IVF, when they were together. Because the man had not expressed reservations during the process, Justice Liu wrote, the woman was entitled to the eggs. The justice also co- chaired a language access committee, part of the Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Program. Justice Liu pushed for translators and for signs in different languages at the Daley Center.
“She’s a real trailblazer, an Asian- American woman litigator, and a very successful one. She became a judge,” said Gary Zhou, former president of the Chinese American Bar Association of Greater Chicago. “It’s really setting an example, not just for Asian- American female litigators, but also male litigators who aspire to a distinguished career like hers.”
Chicago’s Chinatown embraced her because she attended so many community events, often speaking to schoolchildren, said attorney Tony Shu, a past president of the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce. “She wanted to set an example for Chinese-American kids that a woman of Chinese descent can be a judge,” Shu said.
A gifted pianist, Laura Liu also mastered the work of minimalist composer Philip Glass, as well as Michael Nyman’s sweeping film score for 1993’ s “The Piano.”
In addition to her daughter, husband and parents, she is also survived by a sister, Jessica, and a brother, Eric. A service is planned at 11 a. m. Monday at the church where she and her husband married, Fourth Presbyterian, at Michigan and Delaware.
“She’s a real trailblazer, an Asian- American woman litigator, and a very successful one. She became a judge. It’s really setting an example, not just for Asian- American female litigators, but also male litigators who aspire to a distinguished career like hers.” Gary Zhou, ex- president of the Chinese American Bar Association of Greater Chicago