Redstate

By Thorley Winston Posted in User Blogs — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Today's announcement of Harriet Miers to succeed Justice O'Connor to the Supreme Court took me as much by surprise as . . . well frankly everyone who wasn't in on making the pick.  However I think we need to keep several thoughts come to mind.

1)    There's a reason why the Senate has an "advise and consent" function on judicial nominees and that's in part to determine whether they're qualified to hold the position.  The process takes weeks which provides ample time for conservatives and libertarians to develop a more informed opinion, even though nominees tend not to answer questions designed to find out how they would rule on certain issues.  There's not reason not to take a deep breath and wait for more information before weighing in with an opinion.  It's more important to get it right than to weigh in first.

2)    We need to be careful and make distinctions in how we compare and contrast issues.  Just as many of us favor changes in the leadership in the House and Senate, it doesn't mean we have to believe every trumped up charge that's thrown against them.  In deciding whether to support or oppose the Miers nomination, we need to separate the wheat from the shaft and condemn those outrageous arguments that people will be throwing around even if the person or group tossing them out there might share the same the views we have on whether to support this nomination.

3)    As others have pointed out we've had a number of Supreme Court appointments with no judicial experience and going to a top tier law school may not be all it's cracked up to be.   There's also something to be said for adding someone to the bench who has practical experience:

I'm entirely unpersuaded that the Court needed another female Justice just to maintain its "diversity." But I'm actually quite pleased at other sorts of diversity that Harriet Miers will bring to the Court. For one thing, she's been a practicing lawyer in a high-level but real-world practice for most of her career. And her practice has been 1000 times more "nuts and bolts" than the extremely esoteric and rare appellate practice that Chief Justice Roberts had, for example.

I expect that some of the loudest critics of this nomination will be law professors and "public interest group" lawyers. Well, I'm sorry, but we've already got plenty of representation from those segments of the bar on the Supreme Court's bench. We don't have anyone on the bench now, though, who's had to worry much about recruiting, administering, refereeing, and making payroll for a major law firm while still actually working for ordinary paying clients who have typically real-world legal problems.

Moreover, being not just a partner, but the co-managing partner responsible for running a law firm of 400+ lawyers requires a rare and nontrivial skill set. I can confirm to you from personal knowledge that her firm -- formerly Dallas-based Locke Purnell Rain Harrell, now Locke Liddell & Sapp after much internal growth and a merger with a prestigious Houston-based firm -- is indeed a major player among Texas megafirms. That background and those skills are every bit as valuable to the Supreme Court as, say, Justice Ginsburg's past service as general counsel for the ACLU. And a track record of having been the president of the Dallas Bar Association and the State Bar of Texas, and having been counsel for the Governor of Texas and the President of the United States, is altogether as impressive, and indeed to my mind considerably more impressive, than a few years' service on an intermediate Arizona appellate court -- which is what Justice O'Connor was doing when she was nominated. What the hard Left will paint as "corporate toadyism" most of America recognizes as facilitating commerce and economic growth.

4)    By picking someone so relatively unknown, it's ultimately up to the President to make the case for his nominee and while I will not accept "trust me, I know her heart" as sufficient cause to support her, nor will I discount that he's in a better position to know how she thinks than most of the partisan/ideological groups that will be weighing in or most of the Senators who will be asked to confirm her.

5)    We need to keep in mind that we have an election coming up.  I'm not referring to the 2008 Presidential races but the 2006 elections which will determine a number of governor's races, legislative races, and who controls the two Houses of Congress and by which margins.  Right now a lot of us are upset with our Party over spending issues and there has been a lot of talk of "taking up golf" during the next race and if the President is perceived as breaking his campaign promise on judicial nominees (and it is way to early to tell) it could be the straw for a lot of conservatives and libertarians to decide to stay home during races that traditionally have lower turn-out.  I would hate to see certain races such as Mark Kennedy's Senate race and Tim Pawlenty's reelection as governor in Minnesota suffer out of a desire to "send a message" to someone else entirely who isn't running.

6)    This administration has another three years left before it leaves office.  I'm betting that they still have things they want to accomplish and those things would be better accomplished with an increased majority in one or both Houses of Congress.  Considering how well they did in helping to take back the Senate in 2002 and increase our majority in 2004, we may want to consider that they may have something cooking for the midterm elections which are 13 months away.  

7)    Even if Harriet Miers turns to be the best thing since Clarence Thomas, don't let up on holding the President and Congress accountable for the spending binge or for their failure to enact Social Security reform.  There is a movement in the House (and hopefully the Senate) to demand the Congress enact offsets as part of any relief for the areas hit by Hurricane Katrina.  Also with the problems being experienced by Mr. Frist and Mr. Delay, I think that this is a prime opportunity to put the leadership's feet to the fire on these issues.