ERLC’s Land trusts President on Miers
- Oct 14, 2005
President Bush’s record on judicial nominees helped convince Richard Land to trust new Supreme Court selection Harriet Miers unless a good reason for him to oppose her surfaces.
Bush announced Oct. 3 his nomination of Miers, the White House counsel, to replace Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Miers, 60, has never been a judge and therefore has no record of judicial decision-making.
“This President has kept no promise more faithfully than his promise in 2000 and again in 2004 that he would nominate only strict constructionist, original intent jurists to the Supreme Court,” said Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. “In the face of unprecedented obstructionism, led especially by former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle in the last term, this President has held fast to his promises and nominated scores of sterling and extremely competent judges.
“One of the people helping him to fulfill those campaign promises has been Harriet Miers,” he said. “She played an instrumental part in helping the president select those judicial nominees as his staff secretary, deputy chief of staff and White House counsel. She has worked closely with this president for more than a decade.
“I do not know Harriet Miers. I do know President Bush and his commitment to a federal judiciary that lives within its constitutional assignment and interprets the law and doesn’t write it from the bench,” Land said. “If the President trusts Harriet Miers to fulfill his campaign promises to the American people, then I trust Harriet Miers until I am given compelling evidence to the contrary.”
Social conservatives had hoped the President would nominate a judge from the federal appellate courts or state supreme courts whose record was clearly conservative.
Miers is pro-life, friends say, and the conservative Christian church she is a member of, Valley View Christian Church in Dallas, is pro-life.
If Miers is confirmed and proves to be a typically conservative vote, it will mark a shift in the balance of the court on at least some issues. O’Connor often voted with the liberal justices on such high-profile issues as abortion and church-state relations.
O’Connor announced her retirement July 1 after serving 24 years on the high court. Bush named John Roberts to replace O’Connor but altered his plans after Chief Justice William Rehnquist died Sept. 3. The President then nominated Roberts as chief justice. O’Connor has agreed to remain on the bench while her replacement goes through the confirmation process.
Of the 109 justices who have served on the high court, 41 have had no previous experience as judges. Rehnquist and former Associate Justice Byron White were two of the most recent justices who were not judges before joining the Supreme Court. They were the only justices to dissent from the 1973 Roe v. Wade opinion legalizing abortion.
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