KRTCampusAs the ink dried on the confirmation papers for Bush-nominated Chief Justice John Roberts, Harriet E. Miers was nominated to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court.
Miers is known for her close relationship with President George W. Bush and her former position as a White House counsel, one of the President’s in-house lawyers. What is not known about her is where she stands on the controversial issues that will face the most powerful court in the United States.
After meeting with Miers to discuss controversial issues including abortion, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a possible 2008 presidential candidate, said that Miers was careful in steering clear of the issue involving Roe v. Wade and women’s rights altogether, as was Roberts in the Senate hearings in September.
Miers graduated from Southern Methodist University with a B.A. in Mathematics and a juris doctor degree in 1970. She practiced law for 27 years and served as the first female president of the Dallas Bar Association. Miers later became the first woman president of the Texas Bar Association.
According to Joe Norton, a current law professor and previous partner at a law firm with Miers, she was known to advocate for the need to “work through the system, to influence systems from within, to open them up.”
