Posted on 10/11/2005 6:04:09 AM PDT by RightSideRedux
http://www.rightsideredux.com/projects/miers/procon.htm
I think we should at least wait until the hearings. Alot will be discovered then.
The media is fearmongering about a "stealth candidate" as if to say souter souter souter..... WATCH OUT CONSERVATIVES.
This isn't the Souter nomination. HW didn't really know him. GWB knows Miers well.
My gut is telling me that the hearings will bring many good things for us. Bush has done well up until now on judges.
Thanks for that information. I am so gonna use that if you don't mind.
I have said this before I will wait until the hearing and watch and listen to this woman..In the mean time i came across this for those that said she has no experiance..
07, 2005 edition
AMONG THE GREATS: Neither John Marshall (left) nor Earl Warren had been judges before becoming highly regarded chief justice of the United States.
CSM/FILE
Experience needed? The long history of nonjudge justices.
Nearly half of justices had no prior experience on the bench.
By Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON John Marshall is widely revered as "the great Chief Justice," but before joining the Supreme Court in 1801 he had never served a day in judicial robes and lost the only case he argued at the high court.
Earl Warren had worked for 18 years as a prosecutor and was three times elected governor of California. But he had no prior judicial experience. Nor did William Rehnquist, Felix Frankfurter, and Louis Brandeis.
The nomination of White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court has sparked debate over her qualifications. Does she have the intellectual heft and constitutional dexterity necessary for the job? And how does her experience compare to the résumés and stature of prior justices?
"People are still learning about Harriet Miers. Hers was not a name that quickly came off everybody's lips when people [asked] who are the most qualified people for the court," says David Yalof, a political science professor and expert on Supreme Court nominations at the University of Connecticut.
But Professor Yalof adds, "The issue has never been most qualified, the issue is qualified."
Who is qualified to sit on the Supreme Court is a determination made on a nominee by nominee basis by at least 51 US senators. There are no set rules for qualification. Although every past justice has been a lawyer, 41 of the 109 justices had no prior judicial experience.
But many of the justices who lacked hands-on experience as a jurist nonetheless had achieved a high level of accomplishment and stature as intellectual or political leaders prior to their nominations.
"Judicial experience is not a prerequisite, but what you look for in place of judicial experience is distinguished experience as a law professor or public official, and Miers really doesn't have either of those two," says Michael Comiskey, a political science professor at Penn State University at Fayette.
One key consideration, scholars say, is the goal of the nominating president.
"She clearly doesn't have the kind of symbolic significance that presidents are sometimes going for in choosing justices - those who you put on the bench because you expect them to be great justices," says Keith Whittington, a politics professor at Princeton University and visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
President Reagan tried it, unsuccessfully, with the nomination of Robert Bork and succeeded with Justice Antonin Scalia, he says. "Earlier in the century Oliver Wendell Holmes was in that mold. Louis Brandeis was in that mold," Professor Whittington says.
Other goals
But naming the next Holmes or Brandeis is not the only legitimate goal in a high court nomination.
"In lots of other cases you are putting people on who are reliable and have good judgment. You don't know if they are going to be great justices but you think they are going to be good justices, and she [Miers] seems to be more in that mold," he says. "She may emerge as a great justice for all we know, but that is not necessarily the point of picking her."
Might as well wait for the hearings to learn more.
But really, it's not important what I know about her. Or how I feel about her. I cast my vote on this issue last November. I don't get another vote on it. What really matters is what George W. Bush knows and how he feels. And he's made it clear. The entire Supreme Court process is removed from the democratic process, so our opinion isn't worth a bucket of warm spit.
If you think Republicans put bad people on the Supreme Court, vote Libertarian in 2008.
Just ignore all those conservative columnists, and all those on FR who oppose this nomination, they are just a bunch of elitists, they are just a bunch of cry babies who are throwing a hissy fit now because they were not consulted on this nomination. Just keep insulting everyone everyone who dares to question this nomination, burning as many bridges as possible is the best solution here. ( end sarcasm )
If you think Republicans put bad people on the Supreme Court, vote Libertarian in 2008...
...and end up with Hillary in the White House. I'm sure the Democrats will do a much better job of putting conservative judges on the Supreme Court than those rascally Republicans. < /sarcasm>
Sitting on the Fence..
The late Chief Justice Rehnquist also came to the court with no experience. He was the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. One of Rehnquist's principal functions in that job was to screen candidates for potential Supreme Court positions. Isn't that what Miss Miers's job now?
When Kleindienst the Deputy Attorney General and Attorney General John Mitchell were looking for a replacement for justice John Marshall Harlan, Mitchell settled on Rehnquist. Despite his relative youth (he was forty-seven), inexperience, and political views that diverged from those of many senators, his nomination was confirmed, 68-26, December 10, 1971. He joined the Court on January 7, 1972, the same day as Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr.
So I will wait and see.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.