So far, preventing the lifetime appointment of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court has been primarily a conservative task. Many on the right have blasted President Bush’s nomination, for her lack of judicial experience and lack of a paper trail that would identify her as the fifth vote to overturn Roe v. Wade and other social rulings dear to conservatives.
Miers is, in all likelihood, that critical fifth vote. But that’s only one of many reasons liberals and progressives should work to oppose her appointment. So far, Senate Democrats have mostly been content to let the Republicans eat their own, vowing to reserve judgment until they presumably learn more at her confirmation hearings. (On the other hand, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, in a rare display of pure idiocy, pronounced himself pleased by the pick because she returns his calls.)
But Democrats and everyone else have all the information they need. Miers would be a terrible justice. To begin, conservatives are right: She has no judicial experience, and the experience she has makes her ill-suited to wearing a robe.
A woman Bush once admiringly called “a pit bull in size 6 shoes,” Miers is, there’s no doubt, an accomplished and aggressive corporate attorney. But that’s exactly the personality type we don’t want behind any bench. Judges need to be fair and impartial, delving into all sides of a case with understanding and empathy, not with a pre-existing political or social agenda. Advocates, and pit bulls, need not apply. Lawyers have become good judges in the past, but it requires an entirely different skill set. An irrevocable lifetime appointment to the most powerful judgeship in the land is no place to find out whether one can do the job or not.
Then there are the conflicts of interest. Miers has been so closely associated with Bush for so many years that it’s almost inconceivable that she wouldn’t be overtly sympathetic to any case that has the administration’s backing. Her remark that Bush “is the most brilliant man I’ve ever known” calls the intelligence of at least two people into question, sure, but more importantly, it suggests a level of obsequiousness that could easily interfere with her role as a neutral judge.
Even more troubling is her role as an attorney for some of the country’s most powerful corporations. While much has been made of how Miers would vote on social issues, less attention has been paid to her impact on the ever-expanding rights given corporations. The impact of Miers’ pro-corporate vote will be there for a lifetime—long after Bush has left office and her fawning admiration for him has become irrelevant.
One of the reasons Bush nominated Miers is precisely because she is a judicial blank slate. As with most nominees from this White House, expect Miers at her confirmation hearings to say very little. We’re left extrapolating her views from her life’s history, and, in this case, the extraordinary loyalty she and Bush have shown each other. Such a rapport comes when two people discover themselves of like mind. That’s particularly true of Bush, who has a fetish of surrounding himself with people who will never challenge his views.
In other words, if we want to know how Miers would vote, we should ask ourselves how Bush would vote. And we know that Bush would overturn Roe v. Wade in a heartbeat and would eagerly inflict all manner of regressive social rulings and expansions of corporate and military power. Until proven otherwise by deeds, not slick, carefully calibrated words, that’s what we can expect.
It’s likely this White House will exert extreme pressure on reluctant Republicans to come on line and support Miers. What we need, then, is for enough Republicans to withstand that pressure and vote no and for vacillating Democrats to join them. In both cases, those senators need to hear from outraged constituents who want, among other things, a justice who doesn’t need training wheels. Heck, send a résumé. You have just as much on-the-job experience as Harriet Miers.
