Kagan had the weakest resume of any Supreme Court Justice in history. She was an associate at a large law firm for perhaps less than two years. In a big firm that mainly means you are reviewing documents for production; that’s about it.
The rest of her history was spent either as a Democrat bureaucrat or as an academic. No real world legal experience.
In contrast, although I haven’t looked at her bio recently, my memory was that Miers was the managing partner of a large Texas law firm, was president of the Dallas and state bar associations (and I think the first woman for both), was involved in or chaired major committees for the American Bar Association, and had a long trial practice history. As a litigator she had major clients. All this before she went to work for W.
Miers got dissed for one reason: she went to a “no name” law school (SMU) so she got dissed by the liberal media/legal intelligentsia as an intellectual lightweight.
Kagan never got any pushback. Why? Because she was from a “big name” law school and had pushed all the right academic buttons.
Any practicing lawyer will tell you you can get excellent practicing attorneys out of any law school; and that Yale and Harvard turn out more than their fair share of idiots, no matter how brilliant they may have been academically.
Real lawyer qualifications come from practicing in private practice and before the courts—real life experience. A fancy degree may be one indication you could be a good attorney, but what you learn in real law practice is a lot more important.
In case you think I’m just hung up on the law school issue, I disclose that I have a degree from one of those law schools, but I can tell you, the present concentration, especially in the higher federal courts, of judges from a very small pool of law schools is very harmful. Frankly, a lot of these folks are in a different world. They have no concept that their decisions affect everyday folks, and that everyday folks have a right to expect that their decisions should be rendered in a way that normal people can understand and apply.