Candidates for USSC after Miers // What was SO bad about Miers' speech

Bios of potential Supreme Court Justices, ranked by popularity on Tradesports.com:

Sam Alito, 35.6. Yale, 55.
"Appointed in 1990 by George H.W. Bush to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Alito has earned a reputation for intellectual rigor and polite but frequent dissent in a court that has been historically liberal. His mettle, as well as a personable demeanor and ties to former Republican administrations, has long had observers buzzing about his potential rise to the high court. "Sam Alito is in my mind the strongest candidate on the list," says Pepperdine law Prof. Douglas Kmiec. "I know them all . . . but I think Sam is a standout because he's a judge's judge."...

"... In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Alito was the sole dissenter on the Third Circuit, which struck a Pennsylvania law that required women seeking abortions to consult their husbands. He argued that many of the potential reasons for an abortion, such as "economic constraints, future plans, or the husbands' previously expressed opposition . . . may be obviated by discussion prior to abortion." The case went on to the Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court's decision 6 to 3."
(US News & World Report)

Michael Luttig, 15.0. U Virginia, 51.
"Luttig became the nation's youngest federal appellate judge at 37 when President George H.W. Bush appointed him to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Alexandria, Va., in 1991–a reflection of his rapid ascent through the legal world...

"...Luttig is regarded as a staunch federalist in the mold of Justices Scalia and Thomas. Luttig recently concurred with the majority opinion that struck down part of the Violence Against Women Act that would have allowed women to sue their attackers for monetary damages. Congress, Luttig said, could not authorize suits against states through its power to regulate interstate commerce. The Supreme Court later affirmed his conclusions."
(US News & World Report)

Michael McConnell, 6.1. U Chicago, 50
"Conservatives admire McConnell's views on religion and government; he's been a vigorous opponent of abortion and a staunch supporter of school vouchers. Some liberals applaud McConnell's opposition to the Clinton impeachment and the Bush v. Gore decision in 2000;...

"...McConnell graduated from Michigan State University in 1976 and attended the University of Chicago Law School. Prof. Geoffrey Stone says that even as a student, McConnell possessed an uncommonly astute legal mind. Stone was so impressed that he called Supreme Court Justice William Brennan to help secure a clerkship for McConnell. "I thought clerking for Justice Brennan might temper some of his conservative convictions," he says. "It didn't work."

McConnell served for a time as an assistant solicitor general in the Reagan Justice Department and then turned to academia for 17 years, first at the University of Chicago Law School and later at the University of Utah's law school. He is regarded as one of the country's foremost scholars on the religion clauses of the Constitution...

"...McConnell is also an outspoken opponent of abortion. In 1998, he wrote in the Wall Street Journal that "the reasoning of Roe v. Wade is an embarrassment to those who take constitutional law seriously.""
(US News and World Report)

Karen Williams, 6.0. Columbia College, U S Carolina, 54.
Strongly supported by Sen. Lindsey Graham (of the Gang of 14) and by S.C. Democrat and former Black Congressional Caucus chair Jim Clyburn, Williams was dismissed by most newspaper accounts because of her votes to overturn Miranda. William Rehnquist lashed out angrily at her for ignoring precedent, stating that the criminal defense and police cultures in America have evolved around Miranda as a standing precedent. (Roberts had explicitly cited thhat sort of dependence as a reason to defer to stare stare decisis even when he believes the initial decision to be wrong.)

Apon chatter that Ms. Williams may be nominated to the Supreme Court, all local newspapers could say about her was to talk about how she was considered "insensitive" for finding against a woman who sued because of sexual innuendo at her workplace. The woman helped produce "Cocky" outfits for the South Carolina Gamecocks.

Williams' other major case was upholding the Pledge of Allegiance in a Virginia dispute enjoined by 25 other states' attorneys general. She found that the pledge did not have a religious purpose and did not entangle the state with religion, and that the suing parent, Myers, had no basis to litigate for his children (an apparent deliberate slap at the 9th circuit, wherein the courts threw out the pledge when an atheist father sued "on behalf" of his Christian child that the pledge was a violation of his child's right not to be exposed to Christianity.) Williams found religious recognition pervaded early US history.

Concurring with Williams, other members of the majority criticized Williams for crossing the line of separation of Church and state drawn by the USSC.
(Dangus' own researh)

Edith Brown Clement, 4.3. Tulane, 57.
"She was nominated to her current seat on September 4, 2001 by President George W. Bush, was confirmed by the Senate on November 13, 2001 by a vote of 99-0, and received her commission on November 26, 2001.

"Judge Clement is a member of the Maritime Law Association of the United States, the Federal Bar Association, the American Law Institute, the Federalist Society, the Tulane Law School's Inn of Court, and the Committee on the Administrative Office of the Judicial Conference of the United States.

"With John Roberts' promotion to Chief Justice by President Bush, the media has mentioned Clement as a possible choice to fill what would have been his spot as an Associate Justice because she is a woman. Time (magazine) however stated that Clement's current chances seem to be somewhat diminished because the Bush administration believes her to be guilty of excessive self-promotion. Eventually, George W. Bush picked White House Counsel Harriet Miers as his nominee to succeed Justice O'Connor, but with the withdrawal of Miers's nomination [1], Clement again is a potential nominee."
(Wikipedia)

Edith Hollan Jones, Cornell, U Texas, 3.5
"Edith Hollan Jones has the right resume for the Supreme Court short list. She has spent much of her life in President Bush's home state of Texas, and in two decades on the federal bench, Jones has built a staunchly conservative record. Now, though, some court watchers are wondering whether she is too far to the right to ever be confirmed...

...Jones has pleased judicial conservatives with her steadfast opposition to activist judges and her views on abortion. In a 2004 abortion case, Jones railed against the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, calling it an "exercise of raw judicial power." She said recent studies about the emotional effects women face after an abortion and evidence that babies can feel pain earlier than was once believed could lead courts to conclude that a "woman's 'choice' is far more risky and less beneficial, and the child's sentience far more advanced, than the Roe court knew.""
(US News and World Report)

Janice Rogers Brown is currently an Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court, where she has served since 1996. She is the first African-American woman to sit on California's highest court.

Justice Brown's highest profile decision is Hi-Voltage Wire Works Inc. v. City of San Jose, 24 Cal. 4th 537 (2000), for which she wrote the majority opinion striking down a San Jose program that offered preferential treatment to businesses owned by minorities or women.

California's Proposition 209, approved on November 5, 1996, changed everything. By an extensive examination of the ballot pamphlet materials that accompanied Prop. 209, Brown concludes that Prop. 209 was intended by the voters to make the government "fair, color-blind, race-blind, gender-blind." San Jose clearly violated this directive because the Program required special outreach to MBEs and WBEs and encouraged what amounted to discriminatory quotas and set-asides.

In American Academy of Pediatrics v. Lungren, 16 Cal.4th 307 (1997), the majority struck down on state constitutional grounds a statute requiring pregnant minors to secure parental consent or judicial authorization before obtaining an abortion. In a lengthy dissent, Brown castigates the court for acting as a super-legislature. She states early in her dissent, "The fundamental flaw running throughout [the majority's] analysis is the utter lack of deference to the ordinary constraints of judicial decisionmaking--deference to state precedent, to federal precedent, to the collective judgment of our Legislature, and, ultimately, to the people we serve." She is particularly dismayed by the court's lack of deference when, as here, the standards dictated by state, federal, and legislative precedent are clearly derived from history, context, and text. With regard to the statute itself, it is notable that Brown (1) finds the statute's age limitation not unreasonable, and (2) acknowledges a liberty interest in parents' controlling their children that is "historically more sacrosanct than a minor's right to privacy."

Brown's ... opinions seem to rebut the "not qualified" rating initially imposed upon her by the State Bar of California's Commission on Judicial Nominees. For the most part, they are well written and extensively researched. It is difficult to pin her down to any one modality of interpretation: although she seems to be extra-sympathetic to originalism, she also methodically lays out the relevant precedent and carefully distinguishes seemingly inconsistent cases on the way to her conclusions.... This careful, and at times overwhelming, attention to precedent also mitigates any assertion that she would be an activist judge. ... But although Brown seems to faithfully follow precedent, her Kasky dissent shows that she is more than happy to raise strong objections to the existing precedent if she feels that it is somehow misguided.
(Steven Wu at SCOTUS blog)

To further explain my problem with McConnell:

SCOTUS overturned SCOFLA in a 9-0 decision, stating that partial recounts were unequal protection under the law and were wholly illegitimate. SCOFLA permitted the recounts to occur, anyway. The case wet back to the Supreme Court, and was renamed Bush v Gore.

All 9 judges concurred that SCOFLA's actions were illegal, contrary to press accounts that Bush won 5-4. 7 judges concurred that the US Supreme Court had the authority to overturn SCOFLA's interpretation of the US Constitution. What 5 judges had done was to co-sign the majority opinion to pre-emptively block SCOFLA from any further mischief, by enjoining further cases, and asserting that there was no conceivable remedy to accomplish what all 9 justices had agrees was what the US Constitution was the only permissable a recount: A recount of all counties, in accordance to what the state of Florida had already set were the rules, and by December 14th, the date derived from the US Constitution for counting the electoral votes of an election held on November 7.

Two justices, Souter and Ginsburg, IIRC, wrote a dissent, arguing that SCOFLA had acted illegally, but the USSC had no authority to force its interpretation of the law on SCOFLA. They cited Yniguez v. Park, which found that the state of Arizona could throw out an initiative to make English the official language, because the Arizona Constitution also had a clause stating that Arizona must not pass laws which the US Constitution forbids Congress from passing.

Yniguez could not reasonable set precedent for Bush, however. The USSC did not truly find that Arizona could interpret federal law as defined by the Constitution within the state of Arizona, but rather could define for itself what its own constitution meant when it granted rights based on what rights were granted by the US Constitution.

How duplicitous were Ginsburg and Souter? Both had voted to uphold Roe v. Wade, which based its Supremacy over state constitutions banning abortion on the grounds that it was not permissable to have various states creating a "patchwork" of differing sets of constitutionally protected rights... which is seemingly what Yniguez did, and exactly what Gore would do.

McConnell's reasoning wouldn't interpret the law liberally or conservatively: it would allow the most liberal court to rule.

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