[writmeister]

Attorneys in private practice must keep a trust account for funds collected from a client called IOLTA accounts in order to avoid co-mingling with their own funds. Many state bar associations instituted a policy where they collected a portion of the interest on the IOLTA accounts and used them to fund legal services for the poor.

The Fifth Circuit in 2001 found that the Texas program violated the Fifth Amendment because the clients had a property interest in the interest generated by the IOLTA account and could not be taken by the State. However, in 2003, the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision upheld a similar program from Washington State as a valid public use.

The IOLTA programs were a darling of the left to fund activist lawsuits in the name of the poor.

[lentulusgracchus]

Oh, thanks for the inside-baseball explanation.

So, Miers supports the IOLTA idea, which is a sort of minor liberal bellwether not well known outside the legal community.

Thanks for the post. That would seem to be material information, for anyone trying to figure out whether Miers is a principled conservative or a "go-along/get-along" liberal in the mold of Kathy Whitmire, in my example above.