October 3, 2005: NORTON ON NOMINATION OF HARRIET MIERS TO THE SUPREME COURT

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 3, 2005

NORTON ON NOMINATION OF HARRIET MIERS TO THE SUPREME COURT

Washington, DC--Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), who has retained her role as professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, today issued a statement concerning the nomination of White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Congresswoman is also Judicial Nominations Chair for the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), who will make their own decision later in the nomination process. Norton’s statement follows.

“When Justice Sandra Day O’Connor retired, few regarded her role as the first woman on the Supreme Court as the most significant part of her service. Our country has come a long way since breaking barriers, such as race and sex , was so unusual that it overshadowed what happened afterwards or conditioned our expectations for future nominees. Justice O’Connor was very conscious of being the first woman on the Court, but she must feel particularly gratified that she is most remembered today, not for breaking that historic barrier, but for making the Supreme Court her court. During her service, the Court became the O’Connor court because her vote and opinions determined the direction of the Court itself. A survey of her rulings will leave no doubt that she was a conservative, but her tenure showed that her political background did not commit her to anybody’s ideology, even the political philosophy of a lifetime once she became a member of the Court.

“What must not be underestimated in considering the Miers nomination is just how many areas of the law O’Connor proved decisive in leading the Court. To site only some of the 5-4 decisions, they include cases from affirmative action (Grutter v. Bollinger), to the Americans with Disabilities Act (Tennessee v. Lane), the Voting Rights Act (Morse v. Republican Party of Virginia), separation of church and state (McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky), environmental protection (Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation v. EPA), and of course, perhaps the most pivotal set of decisions involving a woman’s reproductive freedom, including Stenberg v. Carhart.

“In appointing Harriet Miers, the President has appointed a woman who has been his own lawyer, in whom he therefore has confided and who presumably has confided in him. He knows for sure what the Senate does not know about her personal, political, and legal leanings. Now the Senate must discover enough to ensure the country that Harriet Miers has the open mind necessary for a judge and is the appropriate person to fill the vacancy left by Justice O’Connor in particular.

“When a president appoints a person who has no obvious paper trail, the burden on that nominee is to answer questions in great detail to fill in the virtually blank slate her nomination brings. Advice and consent means nothing if we must accept a woman with no record who tells the Senate little or nothing.

“I am relieved that so many in the Senate seem relieved by her nomination because of their personal contact with her as a staffer. I believe their relief comes from the specter of very far right candidates that loomed as alternative possibilities. All we know for now is that Ms. Miers has served most of her life as a corporate lawyer with the usual pro bono work and as a partisan staffer turned insider after Bush became President during the most partisan regime in memory. It will be her burden to show that she will bring to the bench the open mind of a mainstream conservative such as O’Connor that could well be at odds with the partisan mentality she brought to all of her previous work.

“As Judicial Nominations Chair for the Congressional Black Caucus, I will be looking at her record before making my recommendation to Mel Watt, Chair of the CBC, concerning her nomination.”