Harriet Miers... Some Thoughts

A friend send this around a YahooGroup I am a part of, made up of law students, lawyers and former law students.

It cleared up a few things, and I think his analysis and conclusion jive with mine (namely, no opinion yet).

Drudge had a pretty inflamatory headline regarding Miers supporing full civil rights for gays and lesbians, but if you look at the actual text of the questionnaire, she answered "Yes" to a question that could be interpreted a couple of different ways. When groups like LGPAC say civil rights, they mean "special rights." From reading the quesitonnaire, I think Miers meant civil rights, just like everybody else has, not because they are gay and lesbian.

Interestingly, in the same questionnaire, she said that she was not in favor of abolishing the Texas Penal Code section that outlawed sodomy. As you may remember, that is the same Penal Code section that was struck down by the high court recently in Lawrence v. Texas.

The questionnaire also apparently has attached notes from someone from LGPAC who interviewed her, which quotes her as saying "my personal conviction is not consistent with homosexual lifestyle."

Speaking generally regarding the nomination, I am really up in the air on this one. One of the things I would look for in a nominee is force of intellect. And the reason for that force of intellect is that it allows someone to bring about a change in judicial philosophy by the ideas they elegantly articulate. If you have people like Scalia and Thomas saying it long enough and well enough, it has an impact on the legal culture. (I lost a recent summary judgment motion, because the bankruptcy court judge said something like "well, wouldn't Justice Scalia say that this was expanding the rights of . . . ") Maybe Miers has that force of intellect, but is there anything out there to show her as a great thinker?

On the other hand, she is apparently a born-again evangelical Christian (I'm assuming that based on where she went to church and her level of involvement there) and would be the only such person on the Court. She also would be one of the few people on the Court with a great deal of business (running a large law firm) experience and at least some political (White House for 5 years) experience.

This should be interesting.

Agreed... this should be interesting!