A Supreme Court Justice gets paid to think clearly and write clearly about cases accepted by the Court. This is from Miers’ questionnaire, and — unfortunately for her — illustrates her writing of a non-opinion nature, which she sent all the way from the White House of the United States to them senators what want to grill her about it.

[1] I believe strongly in attorneys volunteering their time and giving back to their communities. While in private practice, I made the time to provide legal services pro bono, including work of a non-trial nature, such as contracts, family law, and wills. I pursued two such cases, one on behalf of a prisoner, and the other on behalf of a social security claimant, all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, which denied certiorari…..

[2] My experience on the City Council helps me understand the interplay between serving on a policy making board and serving as a judge. An example, of this distinction can be seen in a vote of the council to ban flag burning. The Council was free to state its policy position, we were against flag burning. The Supreme Court’s role was to determine whether our Constitution allows such a ban. The City Council was anxious to encourage minority and women-owned businesses, but our processes had to conform to equal protection requirements, as well.

What appalling writing and grammar! And stop using the passive voice so much. (Professor Bainbridge and several of his friends point out similar and worse problems with the mistake-riddled, ungrammatical and artless questionnaire.) It’s okay for a CEO to write poorly; it is not acceptable for a Supreme Court nominee to do so (and please put the apostrophe after attorneys in example number one, even though Microsoft Word does not catch it.) Meanwhile, here’s a little writing from Scott Ott:

Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, making the rounds among influential Senators yesterday, refused to answer questions about her views on the landmark abortion case, Roe v. Wade (1973), citing her right to privacy as found in the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut Supreme Court ruling that served as the key precedent for the Roe decision.

She also refused to answer whether she thinks Griswold is ‘settled law’, again citing the 1965 decision. “If under Griswold, people have a right to privacy in the purchase of contraceptives,” Miss Miers said, “I certainly have a right to protect myself from unwanted questions.”

We’d add that, based on the comments of Senator Leahy in the WaPo, it seems entirely possible that Mr. Ott knows more about Griswold than Ms. Miers.

We are trying to deal with the humorous here, not the bizarre. Bizarre would include Miers’ inapposite discussion of “the proportional representation requirement of the Equal Protection Clause,” which does not exist. Bizarre is nominating a person with 8 jury trials and 8 appeals — and no constitutional scholarship or judicial experience — over the course of an entire career, to the Supreme Court. There are many reasons why we oppose the Miers nomination.

Perhaps there is a hidden Bush strategy at work: maybe Democrats will call for a distinguished conservative jurist after they wipe the floor with this nominee.

Addendum

Another gem courtesy of Polipundit.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 20th, 2005 at 7:40 am and is filed under Democrats, General, idiots!, New Media, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.