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.
Not in the least ... it's the fact nobody knows where she's coming from ... a former 'Rat, who gets religion, connects up with GWB gang and becomes a 'pubbie. She would work out fine if Bush were to give her some federal judgeship ... but not a seat on the SC. There are many more much better qualified and more deserving than Miers ...
Well, if Meirs is not qualified, the Renquist wasn't qualified either. He never served as a judge.
While I was Treasurer of the Harvard Catholic Club, Chauncy Stillman decided to donate money to establish a chair in Catholic Studies at the university, which it must be said tended to discriminate against Catholics at that time.
I was not closely involved in those discussions, but I did volunteer to drive Cardinal O'Connell for discussions about this and about refounding the Harvard Catholic Club, which had earlier been kidnapped by Father Feeney and turned into a heretic's club.
Well, the long and short of it was that the Harvard Catholic Club was refounded and got a new center, and Christopher Dawson was the first professor to take the new chair.
Since then, however, the Harvard Catholic Club has mainly been headquarters for liberation theology and every silly dissident movement to come down the pike, and Dawson's successors have been a bunch of leftist dissidents too.
Can anyone blame Chauncy Stillman for those sad results? Or me for being a small cog in the wheels that set it all up? We tried. Louis Auchincloss wrote a story in which he points out that the trustees of foundations invariably betray the donor's wishes. So, how on earth do we know that Miers anticipated anything like what actually happened. Maybe she hoped that SMU had better sense than it proved to have.
You named "W" ~ you know very well what you said. Just follow the thread back to see what I responded to.
If she doesn't Legislate from the Bench I'm with our President.
If you do not like his choice you have two choices
(1) Lobby your spineless Senators (if they grow a Spine for this I would be very suspect of them)
(2) Run for President, Win and then YOU get to pick.
I'm so tired of this, G.W. Bush may get TWO more picks! This pick takes the legs out from under the 14 Morons that tried to take over the Senate, I am much more interested in Smashing them and reminding them that Cartilage does not a Spine make.
TT
LOL!
For many cranky folks here on FR, that's not enough information to make an informed choice. :-)
The Texas Republican party is pretty much made up of Democrats who converted. Miers is not unusual.
Actually Caligula just proposed the horse to sit in the Senat. The horse was never actually seated.
Good post. People around here have been defending this point as if you're automatically a DU operative for bringing it up.
This nomination makes us look a lot like a banana republic, where cronies being appointed to national positions is par for the course.
(SCREAMING AND ROLLING MY EYES!!!)
Did you read my posts???!!! I said NOTHING about her qualifications!!! I was quoting a WSJ piece on cronyism!!!
Please read the posts before you post something irrelevant!!!
Thanks!!!
But Dubya never wrote against cronyism and then turned around and benefited from it. Hamilton did.
"Proper" and "action" are way overrated as anyone can plainly see by the SC votes of Bader-Witchburg, Souter, Breyer, Stevens, and O'Connor.
Where does it say she personally chose these speakers?
Many of our Founding Fathers wrote against things they benefited from...for instance, slavery. Thank God they did!!!
"So, give it up. We got your number. It's not a good one."
I have your number, too. It's 30.2%
For the group that is in the minority on free republic, you sure like to act like the majority:
Do you approve of Harriet Miers for Supreme Court?
Member Opinion
Need more info 41.5% 820
Yes 30.2% 598
No 24.7% 489
Need more info / No come in at over 65% for members.
"Yes" - the ones just accepting her as offered, no questions asked, come in at just above 30%
Your automatic acceptance of Miers is outnumbered by more than 2 to 1.
So before you go acting like you speak for everyone here, just remember you really don't.
And that's the real problem here - not allowing anyone to speak. If you want to support miers, fine. But don't try to insult or shout down anyone who dares question the pick. Because that's been going on for the past 4 days.
But more importantly, this woman is simply not qualified to sit on the highest court in the land. She does not have enough experience and training in the nuances of the law for the position. Putting her on SCOTUS would be like hiring a nurse's aid to perform brain surgery on yourself. Pure insanity, and grossly unqualified for the job ...
Oh boy, another meaningless opinion from an irrelevant pundit. She helped found a series of lectures at a university. The horror, the horror.
Oh, FB...SUCH a welcome post!!!
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