Miers -- One View

Myself | 10/09/2005 | Wisconsin

[Wisconsin]

I am a retired lawyer. I have argued three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, two of which are usually at least footnotes in most Constitutional Law texts.

I do not want a "great" Supreme Court Justice. I want a "great" Supreme Court. No single justice decides a case before the Court, the Court as a whole does.

.....

[AndyJackson]

You have done a wonderful job of showing us why, with a few of the details thrown in, you would be a qualified candidate for the SC justice. You have argued a philosophy of the court, have argued before it, and we could potentially find and review your briefs for the court.

This just underscores our concerns about Miers.

[BCrago66]

I'm going to use that line when I call myself a carpenter on my resume. At interviews, I might be asked:

Ever built a table?
Ever built a cabinet?
Ever built a chair?
Ever built a house?
Ever built anything out of wood?

I'll answer No, No, No, No, and No but that doesn't matter. It's not what I have that matters, but what I am. And I'm a carpenter.

[Colonial Warrior]

One thing for sure...I'm glad I live in today's world.

Imagine the stink it caused with Moses returned with the tablets. Do you think they questioned his schooling and demanded to see the paper trail?

*sigh*

[Logical me]

One thing missing here is don't get in the face with a short, extremely educated lady. You'll get your a@@ whipped. I believe the President knows this lady and he has picked a lady that will cut you down if you are wrong. Wait until the hearings. I hear a few smart a@@ Republicans will try, I feel sorry for them. Democrats? If one had a brain it might be a challenge. She'll be calm, cool, and will deliberately put these stupid Senators back in their seat and make them look like the fools they are.

[Lancey Howard]

Though I tend conservative, my "great" Supreme Court is not necessarily conservative.

Thanks for your thoughtful post. But I need to ask: Do you agree that a great Supreme Court is one which looks first and foremost at the literal text of the Constitution and then applies the Federalist Papers and other original Constitutional Convention debating records to that text in order to determine the intent of the framers, and only THEN falls back on stare decisis in order to arrive at a proper ruling?

Or do you agree with the likes of Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, and the Democrats who view the Constitution merely as a "guideline" - - a "living" document - - and the mechanism which it includes for its own amendment as nothing more than an antiquated flourish?

Thank you, and best regards,
LH

[Rudder]

My take on the conservatives who take great offense at Bush's latest nominee is that they wanted to make an in-your-face statement to the libs and salivated at the thought of the battle that would follow the nomination of conspicuously distinguished, fully certified conservative.

[yoe]

Your perspective is very clear and i thank you for it! I said eariler that I thought President Bush has offered the nation "The Blue Plate Special", often the best in the house, I think that is just what Miers will bring to the "table".

[gusopol3]

"Even if he is mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they?" - Roman Hruska in defense of Harold Carswell on the charges that he was 'mediocre'
[edit]

This amounts to saying some common sense might be just what the Supreme court needs. Most of the people in the country don't get through by flashing their credentials.

[ModelBreaker]

Frankly, you're more qualified to be on the court and probably understand and can articulate Constitutional law than Miers. She has no grasp originalism nor as many, including Rush Limbaugh, have pointed couldn't articulate from the bench in written opinions. This appointment is like putting star of the local softball team into a the starting lineup of a major league baseball team. All we have is what little we know. What know isn't comforting. She's supports affirmative action and Title IX. She's organized conferences at SMU featuring radical feminists like Gloria Steinem. Why in the world would she be a better pick than the many articulate conservative originalist judges that have openly spoken out and articulated the benefits of originalism and who have proven track records?

If you look thru my posts, you will see I am one of the FREEPERS who have questioned the Miers pick, sometimes in stronger language than I would have preferred. But I also practiced law for quite a few years and have a lot of appellate experience, including the supreme court.

One of the big mistakes a lot of the anti-Miers crowd make is on the qualification issue. Miers is obviously a very smart and an experienced attorney. She has all the intellectual and educational tools to be a fine justice. You don't get where she has gotten without that. In the population as a whole, she is upper 1/100th of 1%.

A second mistake is the assumption that constitutional law is some sanctum sanctorum. It isn't. It's a one year course in first year law school. If you have that and the Federal Courts class, and you work hard in each of them, you understand most of the big picture that goes into being a constitutional scholar.

Then when a particular case comes along, you study that area in depth and reach a conclusion. The point is, it isn't rocket science. The parts of constitutional law that are actually difficult are difficult because the case law is incoherent and unprincipled. She can read incoherent and unprincipled cases as well as any other good attorney--if her IQ was 50 points higher than it is, the cases would still be incoherent and unprincipled.

The issue is not whether she can understand the constitutional issues in the cases that come before her. I assure you, she can. Nor is the issue if she can "grasp originalism." She can. The issue is whether she IS an originalist. And that's where I have difficulty with the president's choice.

But I think the anti-Miers crowd should get off the qualifications issue because it is a dead horse.

[ScreamingFist]

The guy who wrote that was Blackman, one of the first mentally challenged Justices to appear on the Supreme Court. He would have made a better gas station attendant.

I'm sure you accidentally skipped down and addressed me instead of FReeper Wisconsin. I have never argued before the SCOTUS, Wisconsin has........

[Reagan Man]

>>>>In my opinion the present Court has two great failings.
>>>>Second, it lacks clarity.

Not on the issue of abortion rights. The SC hasn't lacked clarity on the abortion issue since RoevWade was decided. By all standards, the worst decision by any SC since the inception of the Republic. 45 million potential lives snuffed out because so many people have no respect for human life.

>>>>I think Miers will make this court better.

Unless something comes out in the Senate inquisition to change my opinion of Miers, I think she will be a solid conservative, aka.originalist, addition to the high court.

[onyx]

Thanks for the ping, deport. I like your thinking, Wisconsin!

[gusopol3]

"Right at the end of his life, Benjamin Franklin wrote a pamphlet giving advice to Europeans planning to come to America. He said it was a good place for those who wanted to become rich. But, he said, it was above all a haven for the industrious poor, for 'nowhere else are the laboring poor so well fed, well lodged, well clothed and well paid as in the United States of America.' It was a country, he concluded, where a 'general happy mediocrity prevails.' --from Paul Johnson, A History of the American People,p.235.

any question here about the intent of the framers?

[JCEccles]

A great Supreme Court is one that has an open mind -- one that sees each case not merely as the stuff to be pressed into another brick in a long running ideological argument, but as an individual question with its own facts and peculiarities of law. A great Supreme Court is one that has intellectual integrity -- its decisions are defensible as logical honest outgrowths of the facts and law in the case.

A great Supreme Court is not a life-tenured cabal of nine philosopher kings let loose to unknit and reknit the social fabric of our nation to bring it more into form with their haughty personal opinions of what "ought" to be. With the exception of Scalia and Thomas the present Court is stuffed full with these self-important tinkerers, as exemplified by Breyer and, in her dotage, Sandra Day O'Connor. Don't like sodomy laws? Stroke of the pen. Don't like "icky" capital punishment? Look to effete Europe for a new model. Stroke of the pen, and done.

Every decision these blowhards make is ostensibly bottomed on open-minded "logical honest outgrowths of the facts and law in the case." Just ask them. They have it all well and abundantly footnoted.

Sorry, I don't buy the progressive "every day in every way, our decisions are making life more and more just" claptrap that lurks in your defense of the abominable Miers nomination. She's an intellectual lightweight and ninny with latent "progressive" views (witness her teary-eyed plea for everyone to understand that crime is really a problem of self-esteem). Spare us. We don't need a fuzzy-brained social worker on the Supreme Court bench.

Put Luttig or McConnell on the SCOTUS bench. Either one of them is far, far superior to Bush's office pet. Either of them has the intellectual strength and experience to resist the pied piper tune of the judicial progressivism that has swept O'Connor and Kennedy into tow.

And either of them will give us at least ten more good years of strict constructionism, years that the 60 year-old Miers will squander just trying to fugure out what a constitutional philosophy is.

Or, just fire all the justices and program a slot machine to give us decisions randomly with a pull of the arm. It would be an improvement on what we have and on the "open minded" Court that is apparently your most choice fantasy.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

She is a better pick because she lacks a paper trail. Without a paper trail, the left has nothing to use to attack the nominee.

So, deception trumps principle?

To say this choice is brilliant by it's deception is to give the President a medal for deception.

Is this the point to which he has ultimately retreated?

Is this his ultimate boast?..."My greatness as a President is now defined by my ability to hide what I'm doing from both friend and foe."

When you brag about the President's ability to be a great poker player using his skill at concealing his hand, you forget playing poker is ultimately about the selfish, personal enrichment of the deceptive player.

[BCrago66]

Correct. Mistakenly replied to the wrong person. But Blackman is still an idiot.

[BCrago66]

You mean it's easier to deal with a tall educated lady than a short one? And how does weight enter into it? Is it harder to deal with a skinny or a fat educated lady (I suspect the later, if only for esthetic reasons)?

"Logical me," since you started down this important road, the people have a right to your answers to these questions.

[joesnuffy]

I also like to think of the SCOTUS as a whole...

[Wisconsin]

" Do you agree that a great Supreme Court is one which looks first and foremost at the literal text of the Constitution and then applies the Federalist Papers and other original Constitutional Convention debating records to that text in order to determine the intent of the framers, and only THEN falls back on stare decisis in order to arrive at a proper ruling?"
I agree that the text is the first and foremost authority. I don't think much of using the framers' "intent" because:

(1) the real intent of the framers might have been "..if I vote for this, Harry will let me in on that great deal on land in Georgia..." or "damn, these seats are hard. let's get this over with..."

(2) it seems to me the "intent" of the state constitutional conventions is as important as that of the drafters and we don't know much there.

(3) I have never found an argument based on historical "intent" that could not be countered with some opposite "intent".

Sure if you cannot figure it out from the text, go to the intent of the framers, but I would favor a lot greater effort to figure it out from the text, and a little more willingness to amend, rather than looking at intent.

I think that makes me a bit more of a "textualist" than a "originalist" in theory terms.

[thoughtomator]

Unfortunately, this all depends on Miers being what we hope she might be, something regarding which we have little information to support it. This pick is too important to take the risk.