As If I Didn't Already Have Enough Problems With "W"...
Harriet Miers?
You can't be serious. Please. Tell me you're not serious.
The United States Supreme Court is the most prestigious institution in the country, and arguably the most influential one at that. The people who sit on that Court should be the best minds that our nation has to offer. Usually, Supreme Court justices demonstrate their acuity by attending and excelling at that most prestigious law schools in the country, then by clerking either at the Supreme Court itself or under a judge at one of the federal Circuit courts. Usually, Supreme Court Justices spend several years as judges, either somewhere within the federal court system or on their state's Supreme Court. Even if a Supreme Court Justice never served as a judge - and there are a number who were appointed without ever having been a judge - they were extremely distinguished attorneys who had argued multiple cases before the United States Supreme Court.
Harriet Miers, to the best of my knowledge, has done none of the above. She attended Southern Methodist University's law school, which isn't even the close to being the most prestigious school in Texas, much less in the nation. I have no idea how she did there, but if she finished at the top of her class it seems to have escaped mention. She clerked for a federal district judge, which is not shabby, per se, but it is a far, far cry from clerking for one of the higher courts. She apparently had a fine career working for a law firm in Dallas, but that experience isn't even remotely comparable to working for one of the larger firms in New York, Washington, or even Houston, for that matter. Although it's possible that something has escaped my notice, I don't think she's argued even one case before the Supreme Court.
So what the heck makes this person qualified for a lifetime appointment to one of the most important positions in the country? Well, she has been mightly loyal to the President. She's held all sorts of nice-sounding (though not terribly important) positions in Texas, and she's been W's personal attorney for quite some time. And she's a woman, which Bush thought was important this time around. But that's it.
If that passes for qualification these days, this country is in a heap of trouble. While I reserve the right to admit a too-hasty judgment at some point in the future, from where I sit right now this pick looks like an absolute debacle.
posted by Pelagius @ 4:17 PM
10 comments
10 Comments:
This might be part of the president's ingenious plan of deflecting attention from New Orleans by messing something else up . . . .
When I become president, I'm going to nominate Dave Roland for the supreme court. But only if he wears the Vandy Commodore hat.
i agree with you, but probably for different reasons. if bush wanted to deflect attention from anything, he would have done what i would have wanted him to do, and that's nominate someone who actually has a conservative record to stand on. instead, he's going safe, and this whole "wait and see" stuff makes me nervous. what a disappointment.
The attention deflecting comment was a reference to this past weekend's SNL. During the weekend update, Horatio Sanz said that Bush is a genious because everytime he gets grilled for something, something else comes up to take the heat off. I don't really think he'd do that, I just think this is a bad choice overall.
I agree the appointment is BS, for most of the reasons you mentioned, and particularly the ethics of a president putting someone in his own administration on the court. However, why are you knocking her for going to SMU? Where does it say a canidate has do have an ivy league education to be qualified?
Think about in terms of college football. The vast majority of NFL players come from a limited set of the very best football programs. There's a reason for that - those programs attract the most talented athletes and provide them with the highest-quality coaching. Now occasionally a really talented player will slip through the cracks and end up at a less-prestigious school. But at that school they will become the undisputed star because of the lower level of talent that surrounds them. If they perform spectacularly enough, they might possibly get drafted into the NFL and have their chance to prove themselves against the big boys.
President Bush, as president, has the top pick in the draft. He has the opportunity to choose from among Heisman trophy winners and conference MVPs to fill an important, immediate starting role on the judicial team. With the Harriet Miers nomination, he used that top pick to get a player that wasn't even the star of their Division II team.
It may be the case that Harriet Miers really wanted to attend law school at SMU, and that for this reason she passed up the opportunity to go to a (much) more prestigious school like the University of Texas (or any number of other schools more renowned for their academic rigor). But in choosing to attend a less-rigorous law school, one would expect a top-flight, Supreme Court-quality legal mind to have performed well above the level of her peers. Miers did not so distinguish herself, and that's why I think that her law school experience is a strike against her.
Something like 41 of the 109 justices that have served on the Supreme Court came to the Court with no judicial experience. Chief Justice John Marshall (famous for setting the precedence for the now-commonplace notion of judicial review) came to the Court with absolutely no judicial experience. And he was actually serving as John Adams's Secretary of State when he was appointed to the Supreme Court (and continued in that post until the end of Adams's term).
(Sorry...my mom was a civics teacher and I was a history major...I had to say something!) :) I don't know anything about Harriet Miers, so I can't join that part of the discussion.
Again, my problem with Miers is a combination of deficiencies, not just any one.
Chief Justice Marshall was widely considered the finest lawyer in the nation. He served with distinction in both the Virginia state legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives. He served both as a special diplomat to France and as Secretary of State. There was little question that he was one of the brightest intellectual stars of his age.
Meanwhile, Harriet Miers is reputed to have done a bang-up job with the Texas Lottery Commission. Given a choice between the two...
We spoke at small group last week about Jesus' saying in the Sermon on the Mount that we would be judged by the same standard we use to judge others.
As much as I appreciate my friends' enthusiasm for a future "Justice Roland," I have to clarify that the chances I will ever meet my own criteria are pretty slim. I went to a very good law school, but (sadly... or not so sadly, depending on how you look at it) finished nowhere near the top of my class. I made no effort to write for my school's Law Review, nor did I have any interest in clerking for a judge. Those would all be BIG strikes against me, based on my own standards. I'm OK with that.
The one thing that I have going for me (which, arguably, makes me more qualified for the Supreme Court than Harriet Miers) is that I have made constitutional law the primary focus of my studies and practice. I also have the benefit of working with an organization whose focus is to get its attorneys arguing in front of the Supreme Court, which is a telling measure of an attorney's ability. That being the case, and Lord willing, I should eventually be well-qualified to consider and rule on the vast majority of the issues the Supreme Court is called upon to consider. But not for, oh, twenty or thirty years. So we've got time to think about it. ;-)
Dave, if I become president, you are going to be on that court. And you will be wearing that Get Lucky Hat and that Vandy hat..maybe at the same time. That would probably be my political platform. Vote for me to get Dave into the Supreme Court. He likes hats.
If Bush can get Miers in there, I can get you in there. :-)
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