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Posted on 10/06/2005 7:15:47 PM PDT by jdhljc169
Today's Chronicle of Higher Education has a story that describes Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers' involvement with a lecture series at her alma mater, SMU Law School. The inaugural lecturer? Gloria Steinem. I've played these games in law schools, and this story sends up red flags for me. Here's my take on it ...
I was reserving judgment, but after having read the Chronicle article (and given conservatives' skittishness about her already), I think she's a non-starter. Miers may be a very nice person - and by all accounts she is. But she has never served as a judge, and while I do not think that an attorney must have been a judge in order to be an excellent justice, I do think that if you want to be certain of a nominee's views on the proper role of the judiciary, you better have seen them in action as a judge.
We haven't. And absent that, we must look to other events in Miers' professional life to ascertain her perspective. To that end, the Chronicle article is instructive:
In the late 1990s, as a member of the advisory board for Southern Methodist University's law school, Ms. Miers pushed for the creation of an endowed lecture series in women's studies named for Louise B. Raggio, one of the first women to rise to prominence in the Texas legal community ...Ms. Miers, whom President Bush announced on Monday as his choice to fill the Supreme Court seat being vacated by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, not only advocated for the lecture series, but also gave money and solicited donations to help get it off the ground ... A feminist icon, Gloria Steinem, delivered the series's first lecture, in 1998. In the following two years, the speakers were Patricia S. Schroeder, the former Democratic congresswoman widely associated with women's causes, and Susan Faludi, the author of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1991). Ann W. Richards, the Democrat whom George W. Bush unseated as governor of Texas in 1994, delivered the lecture in 2003.
Having served on the faculties of three law schools, I can tell you that if you are an academic of the conservative political persuasion, this is the way you play the game: you call things by the terms the liberal academic establishment uses ("Gender Studies," "Women's Studies," etc.) and then you bring in lecturers and provide content that challenges their prevailing "wisdom."
There must be dozens -- hundreds -- thousands -- of conservative female attorneys, politicians, pundits and successful business owners in this country who would be wonderful role models for female SMU law students. If Miers pushed for the creation of a lecture series to honor Texas' first and finest female attorneys, and the series brought in the likes of Steinem and Faludi, then I know as much as I need to know about this woman.
Stick a fork in her. She's done.
"If you were not a liberal in you are young, you have no heart. If you are not a liberal when you are old, you have no mind."
Something like that. Not a big issue. Heck about half the staff of the National Review started out as marxists. You would think the writer would know that.
A law degree is not a requirement to be appointed to the SC.
And my favorite: John Marshall was never a judge until he was persuaded by John Adams to take the job of Chief Justice after Adams failed to get anyone else to do it. it was a hot seat. Remember the Congress didn't even allow the Court to meet for two years, and meanwhile they were trying to dismantle the federal court system.
...and George W. Bush's career was not underwritten??? Hamilton's words stand true.
The cold, hard facts of life are that being a good judge has less to do with being a legal genius than you believe.
Why are you injecting humor into a topic that the anti-Miers folks clearly want to stew over.
They remind me of that Terri Clark song:
I'll never leave, I'll never stray,
my love for you will never change,
but I ain't ready to make up,
we'll get around to that.
I think I'm right, I think you're wrong;
I'll probably give in before long.
Please don't make me smile,
I just wanna be mad for a while.
Such people may well agree with we CONSERVATIVES on a number of points, but they are usually all too happy to murder the innocent to help out the strong ~ every single time.
So, give it up. We got your number. It's not a good one.
Are you saying that the law is beyond the reach of the people, who are, after all, supposed to be the ones who make it?
Ditto. Although Miers is not my choice, I fear if this nomination falls through we will get someone significantly worse. Maybe (if we're lucky) this firestorm will serve as a warning to the President and the next nominee will be Janice Rogers Brown or someone similar.
I wish I knew whether this appointment was who the President truly thought was best, who he thought was the best who had a chance with a very weak Senate, or just loyalty to a friend.
Who is Laura Hollis and why should I give a damn what she says?
How totally bizarre. "W" has much more money than his wife, her relatives out to 4 degrees of consanguinity, and their cousins!
No, that's not what I meant, and you know it.
Besides, your suggestion is one of those meanspirited anti"W" things that pops up over in DU all the time, and those people are sickos.
For sale: Lightly used.
You're actually defending O'Connor?
Listen: whatever Miers may or may not be, I didn't vote for Dubya twice so I could get more Sandra Day O'Connors on the Court.
Laugh...
In answer to your tagline.
What does W have to do with conservatives? He's just a Republican, and that's a horse of a different color.
What on earth are you talking about??? I was quoting Alexander Hamilton and the WSJ...I never brought up Bush.
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