Harriet Miers
Posted on 10/08/2005 8:52:39 AM PDT by JCEccles
The lovably irascible Beldar, the Texas trial lawyer who is one of the two people on earth hotly defending the Miers nomination (the other being our buddy Hugh Hewitt), has posted a convenient link to articles written by Harriet Miers during one of her stints as a bar association honcho. He did this in part to address a charge I made on Hugh's show that Miers shouldn't be taken seriously because over the past 30 years of hot dispute on matters of constitutional law she hadn't published so much as an op-ed on a single topic of moment. Thank you, Beldar. But you shouldn't have. I mean, for Miers's sake, you really shouldn't have.
Miers's articles here are like all "Letters from the President" in all official publications -- cheery and happy-talky and utterly inane. They offer no reassurance that there is anything other than a perfectly functional but utterly ordinary intellect at work here.
Let me offer you an analogy. I was a talented high-school and college actor. I even considered trying it as a career at one time. As an adult, I've been in community theater productions (favorably reviewed in the Virginia local weekly supplement of the Washington Post, yet!) and spent a year or so performing improv comedy in New York. I'm a more than decent semi-pro. But if you took me today and gave me a leading role in the Royal Shakespeare Company where I would have to stand toe to toe with, say, Kenneth Branagh, Kevin Spacey, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline and others, I would be hopelessly out of my depth. I would be able to give some kind of performance. But it would be a lousy performance, a nearly unwatchable performance.
Would that be because I hadn't acted at their level for a few decades? Would it be because I don't really have commensurate talent? Who knows? Who cares? I would stink. And based on the words she herself has written -- the clearest independent evidence we have of her capacity to reason and think and argue -- as a Supreme Court justice, Harriet Miers would be about as good.
It's a bitter, cynical laugh, but yes, I am laughing.
the question is whether she has the level of intelligence required to sit on SCOTUS.
When you're in a hole, stop digging.
Your mid-sized city has 15-20 attorneys who manage firms of 400+ attorneys? Wow.
There is one aspect in which she likely is unique. Personally, I think having an experienced, successful litigator with significant case and trial experience is something that the Court could use. But as has been pointed out, such people rarely leave any record of their jurisprudential philosophy. Miers likely is the only such civil litigator whom Bush knows well enough to have confidence in her judicial philosophy. So if he wanted to appoint someone with more of a litigator's background, she's likely the best available choice. Anyone else would be a far riskier crapshoot in terms of their judicial philosophy.
I'm not sure why people think Miers would in particular be subject to this weakness in her mental acumen. She's been in Washington for quite a long time. I'd be more worried about an "originalist" who is finally freed from the burden of trying to work to get on a higher court.
Amen. Roberts actually gave some pretty fuzzy answers in terms of his judicial philosophy. What if Miers comes out and stakes out a public, firm position as an originalist/strict constructionist?
Right... Aunt Bee who happened to be the head of the Texas Bar... amazing
She won't have the particular subject matter expertise of addressing particular constitutional issues, but that's why you have clerks and do research. You develop that expertise as the cases arise. You look at the text, analyze the caselaw, and write. And likewise, every sitting justice is not an expert when it comes to every federal statute and regulation. They too must educated themselves regarding the particular law that's in front of them when they address such cases. I see no reason to believe that Miers shouldn't be fully capable of correctly doing constitutional analysis given her obvious success as a civil litigator.
"And I DON'T trust W....."
You'd rather have Kerry ?????
you have little choice... except to bitch and make all the DU folks just giddy with delight, as conservatives beat themselves up.
keep it up Travis
Actually, the suspicion has been that Souter in drag, is Souter in drag, himslef, if you were to visit certain night spots in D.C. We'll have to come up with a new metaphor!
Yes, that's how their clerks write. Whether Earl Warren or Thurgood Marshall or Warren Burger could actually write that way themselves, we can't know.
Harriet Miers
There are simply too many troubling signs.
Not just refusing to join the Federalist Society-when offered, no less-but actually recoiling from working in concert with other Bush administration officials who had roots in that organization.
Nothing about this individual-regardless of the assets she may bring to the job-indicates that she is a maverick in any sense of the word.
Nominate Brownie, at least he had horse judging experience.
The most dangerous and damaging person we can have on the Court is some one who is not as brainy as she thinks she is, but who believes her press clipping in the Washington Post. Delusions of grandeur evolve and you end up getting, for example, rulings based on foreign law instead of the Constitution.
The Founders knew what they meant and they were both articulate and prolific in their writings. It doesn't take an einstein to understand that when it says "Congress shall make no law," it means "NO LAW." May God spare us anymore brainiacs like William Douglass, Earl Warren, David Souter, Anthony Kennedy, John Stevens, or Sandra Day OConnor.
Guess it depends on what you mean by "excellence." A lot of naive people think it means dazzling and complex verbiage. And if she doesn't dazzle them with ponderous bullsh*t, what are they going to do--not let her vote? Get real.
They were an amazing group of men--God's blessing was surely on them-- and on us. Let's hope we deserve it.
They were an amazing group of men--God's blessing was surely on them-- and on us. Let's hope we deserve it.
They were an amazing group of men--God's blessing was surely on them-- and on us. Let's hope we deserve it.
Bork said this? Sheesh. Perhaps he would like to consider what a few thousand hardcore people in Iraq have been able to accomplish, then multiply that by, say, 20,000 to begin to account for the 100 million armed citizens in America, a large percentage of whom have had military training and combat experience and who may be getting a good deal more pissed off at the Washington leviathan every day. What's Congress going to do--nuke Dallas? I doubt it.
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