Vetting process on Miers

[isomin at gmu.edu]

Well-connected conservative WSJ columnist John Fund recounts the severely flawed vetting process that led to Miers' nomination:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110007398

I don't know, obviously, whether Fund's account is accurate. But if it is, I think it severely undermines claims that we should "trust" Bush's judgment on Miers' qualifications and how she will vote, as Miers was not apparently not vetted by anyone with expertise in constitutional law or other major issues the Supreme Court deals with. Instead, the decision was made primarily by Bush and Andrew Card, based on personal acquiantance with Miers.

Whatever we might think of Bush's ability to judge character (and given his remarks about the sterling qualities of ex-KGB honcho Vladimir Putin, I wouldn't be too confident even here), he is not an expert on constitutional law and is not qualified to assess Miers' abilities in this area without at least some expert assistance. 

We should not hold Bush's relative ignorance against him; a president should not be expected to be an expert on  con law. We should, however, expect a president lacking such expertise to to recognize this shortcoming and seek appropriate advice from those with greater expertise (to avoid misunderstanding, I emphasize that I don't necessarily mean academics). At least based on Fund's evidence, it would seem that Bush failed to do so here. 

Ilya Somin
Assistant Professor of Law
George Mason University School of Law
3301 Fairfax Dr.
Arlington, VA 22201
ph: 703-993-8069
fax: 703-993-8202
e-mail: isomin at gmu.edu
Website: http://mason.gmu.edu/~isomin/