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Harriet Miers

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See Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination and hearings for details on the nomination and the confirmation hearings.
Harriet Miers

Harriet Ellan Miers (born August 10, 1945 in Dallas, Texas ) is a Texan lawyer who is the current nominee for Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. She is the current White House Counsel in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, who has described her as "a pit bull in size 6 shoes." She was Deputy Chief of Staff prior to her appointment as White House Counsel to replace Alberto Gonzales when he was appointed Attorney General. Prior to her service in the Bush administration she was a lawyer in private practice for 27 years, and served as the first woman president of both the Dallas Bar Association and later the State Bar of Texas. She also served one term on a Dallas City Council. Miers has never served as a judge and has never argued a case before the Supreme Court.

Miers was nominated for the Supreme Court by Bush on October 3, 2005, to replace Sandra Day O'Connor, who announced in July her retirement pending the confirmation of a successor.

Early life, education, and career in Texas

Miers has said "I am a Texan through and through," having been born in Dallas, Texas, and prior to 2001 spending most of her life there.[1] She is the daughter of real estate executive Harris W. Miers, Sr., and his wife, the former Sally Richardson. Miers attended Southern Methodist University, where she received a bachelor's degree in mathematics (1967) and a law degree (1970). If confirmed, Miers will be the first Supreme Court Justice since Lewis Powell not to have attended a top 4 law school in the US News and World Report rankings (though Powell received a Master's degree from Harvard Law School). Miers clerked for Belli, Ashe, Ellison, Choulos & Lieff in 1969, and for U.S. District Judge Joe E. Estes from 1970 to 1972. She worked in private practice for the Dallas firm of Locke Purnell Rain Harrell from 1972 until 1999. She was the first female lawyer hired at the firm, and became its president. When the firm merged with a Houston firm in the 1990s, she became the co-managing partner of a legal business with more than 400 lawyers. As a commercial litigator, she represented clients including Microsoft and the Walt Disney Company.

In 1985, she became the first female president of the Dallas Bar Association. In 1989, she was elected to one two-year term as an at-large member on the Dallas City Council; she did not run for reelection in 1991. (The structure of the council had changed, converting her citywide seat into one representing one district, which did not interest her, she has said.) In 1992 she became the first woman to head the State Bar of Texas. She has also served as chair of the Board of Editors for the American Bar Association Journal. Miers also recently received an honorary degree from Pepperdine University.

Miers met George W. Bush in the 1980s, and worked as general counsel for his transition team in 1994, when he was Governor of Texas. She subsequently became Bush's personal lawyer, and worked as a lawyer in his 2000 Presidential campaign.

Since the mid-1990s, Miers has contributed to the campaigns of various Republicans, including Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Phil Gramm, and Pete Sessions, with recorded contributions to Republican candidates and causes totaling nearly $12,000. Her earlier political history shows support for the Democratic Party during the 1980s, with recorded contributions to Democratic candidates and causes, including the Democratic National Committee, the Senate campaign of Lloyd Bentsen and the 1988 Presidential campaign of Al Gore, totaling $3,000. Her last recorded contribution to a Democratic cause or campaign was in 1988. Ed Gillespie said that she was a "conservative Democrat" at the time.

Personal life

Miers is single and has no children. Two of her brothers and her mother live in Dallas, and a third brother lives in Houston. She also had a sister, Kitty, who is no longer living.

Valley View Christian Church [2] in Dallas, Texas was Miers's church from 1980 until she moved to Washington, DC to work for President Bush. It is independent of any formal denomination, Evangelical in its theology. The church also holds beliefs and practices that are taught in many mainline Southern Baptist churches. While being independent, the church's teaching on salvation through Christ is consistent with orthodox evangelical theology, as is its statement of beliefs.

When pastor Ron Key was asked about Miers's views, he said, "her personal views are consistent with that of evangelical Christians… You can tell a lot about her from her decade of service in a conservative church." [3] If Miers holds the same or similar beliefs of her former church, then she is likely to be an Evangelical Christian.

Miers is a former board member of Exodus Ministries, a Dallas-based "non-denominational Christian organization established to assist ex-offenders and their families become productive members of society by meeting both their spiritual and physical needs." [4]. It should not be confused with the "ex-gay" ministry Exodus International.

Government service

During Bush's term as Governor of Texas, he appointed Miers in 1995 to chair and reform the Texas Lottery Commission, which had been plagued by scandal. She resigned in early 2000, a year before her term ended. She said her resignation had nothing to do with lagging sales in its biggest game, Lotto Texas, but rather that she wanted to allow her successor time to prepare for rebidding the lottery's primary operator contract.

In January 2001, Miers followed Bush to Washington, DC, serving as Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary during the first two years of his presidency. In that role, she opposed the administration's 2001 decision to stop cooperating with the ABA rating of judicial nominees. In 2003, she was appointed to Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. In November 2004, Bush named her to succeed Alberto Gonzales, his nominee for Attorney General, to the post of White House Counsel, the chief legal adviser for the Office of the President.

She is said to be a close personal friend of the President. According to an article in Salon magazine, October 3, 2005, Miers has called Bush "the most brilliant man I have ever met".

Supreme Court nomination

Main article: Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination and hearings
Bush with Miers during the announcement of her nomination

When Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement on July 1, 2005, Bush began searching for her replacement and appointed Miers as head of the search committee for potential candidates. Initially, Bush chose John G. Roberts, Jr. as O' Connor's replacement, but renominated him weeks later as Chief Justice when the ailing William H. Rehnquist died of thyroid cancer. O'Connor was then asked to postpone her retirement, and she agreed.

Meanwhile, Bush began considering Miers as O'Connor's successor, taking into account suggestions by ranking Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada), and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) that Bush's nominees should be outside of the appellate court system [5]. There is an historical parallel here; in 2000, then-candidate Bush picked Dick Cheney, the head of his Vice-Presidential nominating committee, to be his running mate.

On October 3, 2005, Bush officially nominated Miers to serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

Awards and honors

News Articles

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