Bush Tabs Miers For High Court

President Bush has chosen his White House counsel as his second nominee to the Supreme Court, making the announcement just hours before the court began a new term with newly sworn-in Chief Justice John Roberts at the helm.

Mr. Bush offered Miers the job Sunday night at dinner in the residence, CBS News correspondent Mark Knoller reports. If confirmed, she will replace the retiring Sandra Day O'Connor.

"She has devoted her life to the rule of law and the cause of justice," Mr. Bush said, announcing his choice from the Oval Office with Miers at his side. "She will be an outstanding addition to the Supreme Court of the United States."

Roberts, who was confirmed by the Senate 78-22, formally assumes his leadership post with the opening of its 2005-2006 term. Roberts succeeds the late William H. Rehnquist.

Miers was the first woman president of the Texas State Bar and President Bush's former personal attorney. She moved to the White House with Mr. Bush, became an assistant and staff secretary and then Deputy Chief of Staff, reports CBS News correspondent Barry Bagnato. When another friend, Alberto Gonzales, was named Attorney General, Miers took his job, White House counsel.

"She's very much low-key, she's very much about supporting the president and being loyal to the president, and it's truly not about her, it's about serving him and serving the country," attorney Karin Torgerson, who worked with Miers both at a Dallas law firm and at the White House, told CBS radio station KRLD. "She's never been one that seeks glory for herself."

She has never been a judge, a qualm that President Bush addressed in his announcement.

"Justice Rehnquist himself came to the Supreme Court without prior experience on the bench, as did more than 35 other men, including Byron White," said Mr. Bush.

Among the other justices for whom the high court bench was their first judgeship were Lewis Powell, Arthur Goldberg, Earl Warren, Hugo Black, William Douglas, Felix Frankfurter and Louis Brandeis.

Opponents, however, are sure to pounce on the fact that the president is nominating a woman whose views on key issues are largely unknown.

"Democrats and even some Republicans complained that there wasn't enough of a 'paper trail' when John G. Roberts, Jr., came to the Senate and was confirmed ... that no one really knew what kind of a person he was when it came to the law," said CBSNews.com legal analyst Andrew Cohen. "Well, there is even less of a paper trail for Harriet Miers."

"Harriet has earned the respect and admiration of her fellow attorneys," Mr. Bush said, citing her record.

"The problem with Miers, like the problem with Roberts, is that she hasn't spoken in her voice, she hasn't spoken in her own voice, she hasn't had a public position in which she herself is publicly accountable and responsible for opinions and decisions," Yale Law School professor Robert Gordon told CBS Radio News.
"Harriet Miers will strictly interpret our Constitution and laws. She will not legislate from the bench," the president said.

"It is the responsibility of every generation to be true to the founders' vision of the proper roles of the courts in our society," Miers said. "If confirmed, I recognize that I will have a tremendous responsibility to keep our judicial system strong and to help ensure that the courts meet their obligations to strictly apply the law and the constitution."

At a time when the president is being accused of cronyism, Mr. Bush is certainly opening himself up for that again with this nomination, says Cohen. "She's certainly no John Roberts."

National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy said she's not surprised the president picked a political crony.

"It's a little reminiscent of Dick Cheney choosing himself," she told CBS Radio News.

The lack of judicial experience, Cohen said, makes this an extremely controversial choice (audio).

"It has been many, many decades since a president tapped someone for the Supreme Court without judicial experience," Cohen said.

But Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley told CBS radio station WBZ that Mier's nomination should make everyone happy.

"You'll have four liberals on the Supreme Court, and you'll end up having four conservatives on the Supreme Court, and one moderate, Justice Kennedy, in the middle, and we will have all the balance that the Democrats have been crying for for a long period of time," the Judiciary Committee member said.

The nomination, however, worries NOW's Gandy.

"We really don't know much about Harriet Miers, and that's a tremendous concern to us, because we now are at the fifth vote," she said. O'Connor often cast the deciding, tie-breaking vote on Supreme Court decisions.

While the confirmation process is under way, says Cohen, "O'Connor is going to act like an associate justice until she is replaced. There may be some cases where she sits and hears oral arguments, and maybe even participates in the decision, then isn't on the court when that decision is handed down."

"If that's the case," Cohen explains, O'Connor's "vote will not count. If she's the 'five' in one of those 5-4 votes that she's seem to always be involved in, it would then be a 4-4 tie, and then the court would have to decide what to do then."