Hunt For Clues On Miers' Views

Supreme Court Nominee's Stance On Issues Largely A Mystery

(CBS/AP) 
On the other hand, she pressed for more money to improve legal representation for indigent defendants and said root causes of crime — poverty, lack of mental and other health care, inadequate education and family dysfunction — must be addressed.

On the issue that commands the most attention for court nominees, Miers pressed unsuccessfully to have the American Bar Association put its policy in favor of abortion rights to a vote of the membership, showing a sensitivity, at least, to the anti-abortion movement, if not outright support of it.

Hecht said she has attended an evangelical church in Dallas, the Valley View Christian Church, for 25 years and "their position is pro-life and I'm sure her views are compatible with theirs."

Miers bought a $150 ticket to a Texas anti-abortion group's fund-raising dinner in 1989, the year she won a term on the Dallas city council, the group's president said. Kyleen Wright of the Texans for Life Coalition, then called Texans United for Life, said the dinner drew about 30 other officeholders or candidates as "bronze patrons," the lowest level of financial support.

"One would have to assume she is at least moderately pro-life, but how far that commitment goes, I really don't know," Wright said. "No one I know in the pro-life or pro-family movement knows her, locally or around the state."

In 1992, Miers said presidents have no business asking court nominees to toe their line on abortion.

"Nominees are clearly prohibited from making such a commitment and presidents are prohibited from asking for it," she said. People who think such inquiries are proper show "a misunderstanding of the separation of powers by proposing that judicial nominees should mirror a president's views."

In one of the few head-on expositions of her views on public policy, a short gay-rights survey she filled out during her city council campaign in 1989, Miers backed equal civil rights for homosexuals and spending on AIDS education while defending a Texas law — since overturned by the Supreme Court — that made gay sex a crime.

Despite that paradox, a leading gay-rights group credited her Tuesday with an open mind.

"It's only a small window into her thinking," said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, "but it certainly, for me, raises the possibility that she's more fair-minded than our opponents are hoping."

The question on civil rights on the old survey did not pin respondents down on any of the issues typically associated with gay equality today, such as domestic partner benefits or same-sex unions. Kelly Shackelford, president of the socially conservative Free Market Foundation, played down the significance of Miers' answer, saying he, too, could have answered yes to it.

Shackelford credited her with "basic Texas down home values."

Solmonese said the fact Miers even came to a meeting of a Dallas gay and lesbian group to answer its questions suggested a wish to reach out.

"She's pro-family but not condemnatory," Hecht said.

Miers asserted during her city council campaign that "employers should be able to pick the best qualified person for any position, to be filled considering all relevant factors," a position that does not seem in support of mandatory affirmative action. In her own legal career, she broke a glass ceiling and led the way for others.

In 1972, Miers was the first woman hired by the Dallas law firm of Locke Purnell Rain Harrell, when Texas was far from friendly terrain for women attorneys.

At Locke Purnell, Miers worked to ensure that more women joined the firm.

Tom Connop, a partner at the firm — now known as Locke Liddell & Sapp — said Miers was an advocate of employing not only women but minorities, reflected in the more than a dozen female associates in 1984.

In 1996, Miers became the firm's first female president.

"Every woman lawyer in Dallas, Texas, owes a debt to Harriet Miers," said Robin P. Hartmann, a partner with the Dallas law firm of Haynes and Boone who argued cases with and against Miers.