Harriet Miers: It’s Who You Know

With all due respect to Harriet Miers, who is probably a wonderful person, I’m a bit insulted by her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. The old adage that it’s not what you know, but who you know is playing out right before our eyes to the detriment of hard working American women and minorities. Ms. Miers who has never served as a judge has been nominated to a lifelong postion on the highest court in the land. Now arguments about late Justice Rehnquist, who also had not served as a judge, aside, I think this is a slap in the face to all of those who have worked hard working their way up the judicial ladder and actually aspired to sitting on the Supreme Court someday. This tells those people that all of that just doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is how well connected you are and that you haven’t done enough to leave a significant paper trail on your judicial philosophy. Indeed, this makes it even more difficult for the highly qualified to even gain notice for the job. If they must choose a conservative women (in the best traditions of tokenism) surely they could have found someone in the mold of the recently sworn in Justice Roberts. There must be hundreds of Federal judges whose experience make them far more qualified than Ms. Miers.

Heh, on a slightly lighter note, I supose that Justice Scalia will be doubly pissed now. First he was aced out of the Chief Justice job and now he is going to have to serve with someone whose path to the court was paved by Executive branch affirmative action. Annoying Scalia is good sport I suppose!