Harriet Miers next Supreme Court Nominee – Sources Reveal

According the to CNN, President George Bush is expected to nominate White House counsel Harriet Miers as the next Supreme Court Justice to replace Sandra Day O’Connor. ABC News has this to say about Miers.

The White House and Miers’ supporters praise her as a trailblazer and a pioneer in the legal field. The first woman hired by the prestigious Dallas law firm Locke Purnell Boren Laney & Neely, she also was the first female president of the Dallas Bar Association and the first female president of the Texas Bar Association.

Miers met Bush in the 1980s, according to published reports, and was counsel for his 1994 campaign for governor. He appointed her chair of the Texas Lottery Commission in 1995. Miers then was president of Locke, Purnell, Rain & Harrell and co-managing partner of Locke Liddell & Sapp before she joined the White House in 2001.

In addition, Miers was named one of the Top 50 Most Influential Lawyers by the National Law Journal in 1998, and received numerous other awards from groups including the Dallas Women Lawyers Association, the Anti-Defamation League and the Dallas Association of Young Lawyers.

This Washington Post article also explains her character and dedication to the law.

Rather, friends and associates say, it reflects her scrupulous discretion and selflessness — the same qualities that propelled her rise through the legal ranks and into President Bush’s inner circle.

“The thing that comes to mind when I think of Harriet is that she basically puts her clients’ interests ahead of everything, including her own personal life, sleeping hours and all those things,” said Jerry Clements, a partner at Locke Liddell & Sapp, the 400-lawyer Texas firm where Miers was a co-managing partner before coming to Washington. “She is defined by hard work, dedication and client loyalty.”

Miers’s low-key but high-precision style is particularly valued in a White House where discipline in publicly articulating policy and loyalty to the president are highly valued. Formerly Bush’s personal lawyer in Texas, Miers came with him to the White House in 2001 as staff secretary, the person who screens all the documents that cross the president’s desk. She was promoted to deputy chief of staff before Bush named her counsel after his reelection in November. She replaced Alberto R. Gonzales, another longtime Bush confidant, who was elevated to attorney general.

AP: High Court Nominee Has Never Been a Judge

“She has devoted her life to the rule of law and the cause of justice,” Bush said as his first Supreme Court pick, Chief Justice John Roberts, took the bench for the first time just a few blocks from the White House.

Harriet Miers’s Discussion Forum

What are the bloggers saying?
Patterico’s Pontifications; What a Disappointment: Bush Chooses Miers
Althouse; Harriet Miers!

But in the end, Bush has chosen a person who has never been a judge — there will be much talk about that — and a person who is a woman (to replace the Court’s first woman) — so we won’t need to talk about that anymore.

PoliPundit: We Have a Nominee!

I’m not thrilled with this pick, but can live with it. Miers is 60, which is a little too old in the ghoulish calculus of SCOTUS nominations; I’d have preferred someone in their 40s or 50s.

Blogs For Bush; Bush Picks Harriet Miers
Scotusblog: Analysis: Some Initial Thoughts
Wizbang; Bush Picks Harriet Miers For Supreme Court