Beldar the Texan on Harriet Miers.
HH: Joined now by my colleague on the blogging scene, Beldar, himself William Dyer, an old fashioned trial lawyer. He actually knows something about a courtroom, who blogs at Beldar.org, and he's been blogging a lot on Harriet Miers. Beldar, give us your assessment of the nominee.
WD: Well, good afternoon, Hugh. I am one of the people who has been positive in my reaction to the nomination, and that may be because of my frame of reference, because like her, I'm a practicing lawyer. Because I've practiced in Texas where she's practiced, I have a, probably a factually a better handle about some of the things pertaining to her career that have been in some cases garbled or misrepresented, and in a lot of cases, just not properly appreciated.
HH: Tell us about her law firm, and the duties of a managing partner therein.
WD: Well, she has been, before her current job at the White House, had been the co-managing partner of a large Texas firm that actually was the combination of a large Dallas firm and a large Houston firm that merged while she was the managing partner of the Dallas firm.
HH: Oh, wow. That's interesting. I didn't know that.
WD: Yeah, she did.
HH: She oversaw a merger.
WD: She actually oversaw the merger between Locke-Purnell, which was the Dallas firm, and the Liddell-Sapp firm in Houston, each of which were major firms in their respective markets. It was a merger of equals, and left that firm as a clearly one of the powerhouse statewide firms, probably...certainly on anybody's top ten list for major Texas law firms, and on most people's top five list.
HH: Blue chip law firm, in other words, capable of handling...
WD: It's a blue chip firm representing corporate clients, mostly, and clients who are used to picking the best lawyers every place they need lawyers.
HH: The kind of talents that you bring to that job, I've argued with Ramesh Ponnuru and others, are sophistication in the management of strong personalities, knowledge of all the human resources laws and their complexities, contract law, compensation law, ERISA, the sort of things that any large-size American corporate CEO would know, but which is an alien factor on the Supreme Court today.
WD: Well, there's a lot of different management styles within different law firms, and a lot of different ways to skin that cat. But all the managing partners at successful firms, and hers has been a successful firm, they all have certain things in common. For one thing, they all have the respect of all the partners in the firm. And when you're talking about a 400 lawyer plus law firm, it's probably 200 odd partners, getting someone who everybody, or nearly everybody agrees to respect, is not mean feat. They have to have the ability to either induce or compel those people to get along together and work together productively. They have to have skills to mediate, they have to have skills to order. They have to have skills to supervise, they have to run a business, make payroll, handle all the myriad employement logistics, all the sort of problems that any business have, and then they also have to attract business.
HH: Yup. Oh, you have to be...absolutely, you have to be entrepreneurial. Bill Dyer, what about the charge that SMU just isn't good enough for the Supreme Court?
WD: That's something that I can understant how people, particularly from out of state might jump to that conclusion. Here in Texas, the SMU Law School has a good reputation, and always has, particularly in Dallas. It is a well regarded firm. I did recruiting there several years ago at two different law firms I was at. And we considered the top students there as being competitive with the students we hired from more prestigious law schools, including the University of Texas or Harvard, Stanford, whatever. It's not as deep, but the top students can be very, very good. The Law Review she was on there, for example, is a good law review. At the time she was at that school, it was almost certainly the best law review on state law issues, better than the Texas law review. So, it's a little misleading, I think, to the people who are making out like she's some kind of night school graduate, practicing law out of the strip shopping center, are just way off base.
HH: Not that there'd be anything wrong with that, to quote Seinfeld.
WD: Well, no.
HH: Bill Dyer, what about what it takes to become the president of the Texas Bar Association. All bar associations are different, and they're...you know, I often wonder about dogs who chase cars, what are they going to do when they catch it. And so, what about that? I'm not a big ABA guy, or a California Bar guy. I belong to them, but that's because I have to.
WD: Sure. Well, the Texas Bar is very, very different from the American Bar Association. And I have a word or two to add about the ABA later. But for people who aren't familiar with the Texas Bar, it is the organization in Texas that basically supervises everybody who practices law, and everything professionally that they do. It is a mandatory organization that you get your license through it. And you can't not be a member of the Texas Bar, if you're licensed in Texas to practice law. So to develop a leadership position in the Texas Bar, you have to be able to serve and attract a broad constituency. You have to please the office practice lawyers, and the adversary practice lawyers. You have to handle the plaintiff side of the bar, and the defense side of the bar. Big cities, small town. Basically, every kind of lawyer, you have to have some kind of sensitivity to. And they're all involved in the Texas Bar. And the Texas Bar has been one of the leaders in the nation, in terms of things like adopting mandatory continuing legal education, to make sure that lawyers stay up to speed, or board certification procedures like the medical doctors have. We do that now in Texas, and that's something the Texas Bar has done. So being president of the Texas Bar is a significant credential. It shows a level of leadership within the profession, and service to the profession, that we still take real seriously.
HH: Well, this is...it's like alien to the punditry, who are not themselves lawyers, or at least practicing lawyers, that there are skill sets out there that a Supreme Court justice would be well served to possess.
WD: It may just be...I think it mostly is a difference of perspective. I don't fault anybody whose concerned, or whose expressed reservations about this nomination. In almost every case, they're expressing those concers for the right reasons, because they realize how important these nominations are, and they desperately want to see the country get it right. So I don't have any faults find with anyone who is worried, or is expressing some kind of dissatisfaction or displeasure. I think a lot of that will resolve as more factual information gets out there...
HH: If people don't get too dug in.
WD: ...or as she goes through the confirmation process.
HH: Yeah. I'm trying to stop people from getting too dug in. Beldar, I want you to stick around, but I especially appreciated your comment today, people who are accusing defenders of Harriet Miers of Roman Hruskaism, meaning mediocre people defend...need mediocre people as well. And you responded you're not in favor of mediocrity, but you are adament against people defying the practice of law as mediocrity.
WD: I really do feel strongly that way. And it's not that I am faulting some of the people who I think have slipped into that mindset. But there are people who are just thinking well, nobody except a law professor or somebody who is already a judge, is qualified to be on the Supreme Court. And historically, that's very, very different from the way we've picked our Supreme Court justices. That's actually a fairly recent phenomenon in the Court's history.
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HH: Bill, you took Rich Lowry to the woodshed. How could an eminently qualified commentator like Rich have gotten so much so wrong?
WD: Well, I actually don't fault Rich for this. He was passing on information he had been given by some source who I'm sure he had reason to believe was reputable, and knew what he was talking about. His source clearly didn't. I mean, he had some factual information about her credentials, just wrong. They said she had no law review service, when in fact, she had been an articles editor on the top law review at SMU. And some characterizations of her firm and practice that I don't think lawyers here in Texas who are familiar with her firm, and her practice, would think are fair. And that's not because Rich was being careless. He was trying to spread information about a little known nominee quickly, and he just made a mistake. And to his great credit, he promptly and conspicuously corrected it.
HH: Now, let's get to the heart of the matter. What do you think of Harriet Miers?
WD: I think she is going to be someone, if confirmed, and I think she will be, who will have a fair amount in common, perhaps you're surprised to hear this, but a fair amount in common, philosophically, with our new Chief Justice. John Roberts said during his confirmation hearings, if you'll recall, that what he aspired to have said about him, when he retires some day, is that he was a modest judge. And I think Harriet Miers has that same concept. I think she will try to be a modest judge, which is to say she'll stay within herself, within the proper bounds that a judge should stay within, and she won't try and grab the role of being the decision maker on policy issues for the nation, because she doesn't see that as what judges should do.
HH: That's a good thing, in my view.
WD: I think it's a fabulous thing. It's the sort of thing which may come hard to someone who's career has been writing brilliant law review articles, day in and day out. But for someone from her background, whose job has been much lower key, but actually higher stakes, representing clients who have it laying on the line in the courtroom, day in and day out, that's not really a big switch. I mean, we're fairly pragmatic, as courtroom lawyers. And I think she'll be pragmatic in that same way. And people say, well what's her overarching Constitutional interpretation theory? To which my answer is that's not the way courtoom lawyers think on a day to day basis. And I don't think she's going to have an agenda that she's going to pursue. But I think her natural instinctive choices, from what we can see reflected in her record, and certainly reflected in the public service she's done for the Bush administration, leaves you to think that she is going to be, in terms of the role that she tries to play, someone in the mold of Scalia or Thomas. She may not be using the same terminology, or writing the same style opinions. You know, those two justices have very different writing styles between the two of them. But I think in terms of the results she reaches, and her overall impression of what judges are intended to do, I think she will be in that mold.
HH: And what is the opinion of her among the Texas Bar that you have talked with, or generally even before she came to the job or the nomination?
WD: Well, the results speak for themselves. I mean, being elected president of the state bar tells you something. Presiding for several years, successfully, over a successful law firm with four hundred plus lawyers tells you something. Being chosen to be on merits, not prior acquaintance, being chosen to be the counsel to the governor of the State of Texas, tells you something. Now, through that relationship, the then-governor of the State of Texas, now our president, came to rely and trust on her, and gave her the opportunity to continue her public service in Washington. I don't see that as a disqualifying factor. I'm actually a little disappointed in the people who jumped to the conclusion, well that must mean this is cronyism. In fact, she was a well qualified lawyer who already had credentials as a practicing lawyer, roughly equivalent to Justice Powell's, before he was confirmed, before she ever started working with George W. Bush.
HH: Yup.
WD: So, in the sense of being given a position she hasn't deserved, or can't handle, based on friendship alone, there's no evidence at all on that.
HH: Bill, we are out of time. I want to thank you for your posts, which are tremendous, over at Beldar.org. I've sent people there. I hope you keep writing about this. Patient, calm, to the point, and very, very persuasive, if people are open to persuasion.
End of interview.
Posted at 11:04PM PST