Money on Miers

Thomas Lifson, of The American Thinker, is positioning himself as one of Harriet Miers strongest supporters. He makes some very good arguments, which I've mentioned in earlier posts. I really wanted to expand on those thoughts and consolidate them all in one post. One of the things that really ranks in Miers favor as far as I'm concerned is that she is not an Ivy League graduate. (Although it is funny that Lifson used Bush's Harvard MBA to support the decision-making skills he relied upon to choose someone who didn't go to Harvard.) I've been practicing law for almost twenty years, and have come to some conclusions about Ivy Leaguers. Some are as brilliant as Justice Roberts appears to be. Many, though, are merely adequate, which first came to me as something of a surprise, considering how much they paid for their legal educations and the cachet attached to those educations. [And yes, I know I'm offending those of you who are excellent attorneys and Ivy League graduates. I'm just pointing out her -- sorry -- that not all Ivy Leaguers are brilliant, nor are non-Ivy Leaguers anything to be sneezed at.] Franky, if I needed to hire a lawyer, I'd chose someone from Hastings, not Boalt; someone from Baylor or SMU, not University of Texas; someone from Santa Clara, not Stanford. Indeed, the only Ivy League law school that has consistently turned out thinkers I admire is Yale, and I'm unable to account for the reason behind that aberation. (Indeed, maybe it's Bush's Yale background, not his Harvard background, that honed his analytical skills.) I'm also impressed by the fact that Miers worked at a firm called Locke, Purnell, Boren, Laney & Neely, in Dallas. I had the pleasure of working there briefly and it's a marvelous firm. The attorneys were intelligent, practical, hardworking, and extremely nice people. Her employment there must inevitably reflect well on her. Lastly, if she did any trial work, I'm more inclined to bank on her being a strict constructionist than I would be if she'd just gone from clerkship, to professorship, to judgeship. Every practicing lawyer I know, regardless of political beliefs, has left the court at least once absolutely livid with a judge who abandoned the law and substituted, instead, his own beliefs and morality. If Miers has had this experience, untainted by being a judge herself (which might allow her to justify these activist bad rulings), she will bring to the Supreme Court a strong and clear opposition to activism.