Give me a break. The SC is the top of the top for lawyers. That is a sorry excuse since there are legions of more qualified people with a track record.
No one planned on Rehnquist passing when he did, but GWB used it as an opportunity to keep the court status quo, if not move to the left. If anything, it was his opportunity to move it to the right, which he did not do.
Maureen Mahoney, 50, is a leading appellate litigator for the Washington, D.C., firm Latham & Watkins, where she has represented clients including Union Pacific Railroad Co. and the government of Saudi Arabia. She clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and was one of Kenneth Starr's deputies when he was solicitor general for President George H. W. Bush. During the last Supreme Court term, she won a unanimous reversal of Arthur Andersen's conviction for obstructing justice by destroying documents during the Enron investigation. She also helped successfully represent the University of Michigan Law School in the 2003 case in which the Supreme Court upheld diversity as a rationale for affirmative action. Asked in a 2004 interview with the University of Chicago Magazine why she had taken the case as a staunch Republican, Mahoney said that her personal views weren't relevant but added, "I certainly was very comfortable with Michigan's position."
http://www.slate.com/id/2122079/
Maureen E. Mahoney
Partner:
Litigation Department
Education:
JD, University of Chicago, 1978 With Honors; Order of the Coif; Member, University of Chicago Law Review
BA, Indiana University, 1974 Highest Honors; Phi Beta Kappa
Experience:
Maureen Mahoney is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Latham & Watkins, and leads the firm's appellate and constitutional practice. Ms. Mahoney originally joined the firm in 1980, but left in 1991 to accept an appointment as a United States Deputy Solicitor General. During her tenure in the Solicitor General's Office, President Bush nominated Ms. Mahoney to fill a vacancy on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, but the Senate did not act on her nomination prior to the election. Ms. Mahoney returned to the partnership of Latham & Watkins in 1993.
Ms. Mahoney has handled a broad range of constitutional and appellate litigation in the Supreme Court and other courts throughout the country, representing clients as varied as the United States House of Representatives, Union Pacific Railroad Company and the Government of Saudi Arabia. She represented the University of Michigan before the Supreme Court and won the landmark case upholding the constitutionality of admissions programs that consider race as one of many factors in order to attain the educational benefits of a diverse student body. The Legal Times reported that this ruling was a “personal win” for Ms. Mahoney and called her “a skilled appellate advocate, unruffled and poised.” The Daily Journal awarded Ms. Mahoney the “Best Oral Argument” in the individual category accolade for that Supreme Court term and went on to say that she “withstood withering questioning from Justice Antonin Scalia while stressing the points relied upon by O'Connor in her opinion for the 5-4 court.” Most recently, she successfully argued her thirteenth case in the Supreme Court on behalf of Arthur Andersen in a challenge to the firm's criminal conviction. The Legal Times described the argument in Andersen as “one of the term's best.”
Ms. Mahoney argued her first case before the Supreme Court in 1988, when the Court specially selected her to argue a case. She won the case in a 5-4 decision, and the American Lawyer reported that “her presentation was so well-schooled, poised, and disciplined that, according to one justice, the justices passed notes among themselves during the argument praising Mahoney and asking questions about her background.” In 1993, Ms. Mahoney successfully defended a highly publicized challenge to US immigration policies. The American Lawyer reported that Ms. Mahoney used “forensic magic” in the argument, and David Broder's Washington Post column called her argument “superb.” She also represented the House of Representatives in its successful Supreme Court challenge to the Commerce Department's plans for the use of sampling in the 2000 census.
Ms. Mahoney is a member of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers and the American College of Trial Lawyers. She has been recognized as one of the leading appellate lawyers by the Legal Times and Chambers USA; the National Law Journal identified her as one of America's top 50 women litigators; and she received the prestigious Rex Lee Advocacy Award from the J. Rueben Clark Law Society. Ms. Mahoney was appointed by the Chief Justice to serve as the Chair of the Supreme Court Fellows Commission and as a member of the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules to the United States Judicial Conference. She serves on the Executive Committee of the Supreme Court Historical Society, served as the Chair of the Advisory Committee on Procedures for the D.C. Circuit and served on the Board of Visitors for the University of Chicago Law School.
Prior to entering private practice, Ms. Mahoney served as a law clerk to the Honorable William H. Rehnquist (then Associate Justice) and Seventh Circuit Judge Robert Sprecher (deceased).
http://www.lw.com/attorney/attorneysearch_profile.asp?attno=00571
Why couldn't President Bush nominate a QUALIFIED liberal, if he insisted on doing so?