Beldar has a long post defending Harriet Miers’ career as a litigator, including her brief-writing skills. The last case he covers is a constitutional one, “Jones v. Bush, 122 F. Supp. 2d 713 (N.D. Tex), aff’d mem., 244 F.3d 134 (5th Cir. 2000), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 1062 (2001).”
It appears that Harriet Miers, on behalf of candidate and President-Elect George W. Bush, became one of the country’s exceedingly few lawyers ever to handle a case involving the Twelfth Amendment. (How many Twelfth Amendment cases have John Roberts, Larry Tribe, and David Boies collectively handled? Why, I believe that number would be … zero!)
Twelfth Amendment to what, you ask? It definitely looks like they’re talking about the U.S. Constitution.
You remember that one, doncha? “The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves[.]” Gosh, that might have been embarrassing! Win in the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore, then have another federal court rule it was all for naught if both Bush and Cheney were held to be inhabitants of Texas? Ouch.
I wonder: Who was on the other side of Ms. Miers in that case? Who was trying to undo the 2000 election with this Twelfth Amendment argument? Hmmm — hey, I recognize this guy too: Sandy Levinson. He’s only the “W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law” at the University of Texas School of Law. (Translation: heap big professor-guy.) “[A]uthor of over 200 articles in professional and more popular journals.” Been a visiting prof at some other pretty good law schools: Harvard, Yale, New York University, and Boston University law schools. Co-author of a leading constitutional law casebook. I actually sorta know Prof. Levinson. Had him for a class, and I edited a book review he wrote for the Texas Law Review; I liked him a lot, and he’s definitely one of the national stars on the UT-Law faculty. (I think he blogs some too!)
I suppose that would also make him one of those grand constitutional scholars who spends pretty much all of his time thinking about questions of great pith and moment. You know, the kind of superior, intellectually powerful, big-leagues lawyer that Harriet Miers … obviously just isn’t.
“So tell us, Beldar,” you plead, “How’d that case turn out? Did Prof. Levinson save the day for either Al Gore or Joe Lieberman by keeping the Texas electors from voting for both Bush and Cheney?”
Well, the short answer, friends and neighbors, is that Harriet Miers just flat out kicked the distinguished Prof. Levinson’s butt in court. On just about every issue, too. And she did it not once, not twice, but three times: federal district court, then again on appeal in the Fifth Circuit, and then again in the U.S. Supreme Court — another one of those “cert. denied” notations.
You ask breathlessly: “But is that ‘cert. denied’ really a win?” Why yes, friends, it surely is. Because, you see, when you’ve won in the lower courts, then your job as a lawyer is to persuade the Supreme Court not to take the case. Which is exactly what Harriet Miers did here — after first winning so convincingly in the federal district court that the Fifth Circuit, on the way up, didn’t even bother to write an opinion of its own.
Further, though Beldar doesn’t mention it specifically, in some cases Miers was the only lawyer in her firm listed as the counsel of record, so her involvement would have been central.
Comments are closed.