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Keith Burgess-Jackson takes on one of the arguments against Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers:
I . . . think there's some snobbishness involved. Miers is not an Ivy Leaguer, like John Roberts. She didn't clerk for a Supreme Court justice. She hasn't been a law professor. So what. . . .
It occurs to me that many conservatives, especially those with academic credentials, have bought into the Dworkinian idea that the Supreme Court is made up of Herculean philosopher-kings whose task is to make the law the best it can be by some external moral standard. I reject this conception of judging, as should any right-thinking person. The law is not a plaything, to be manipulated by ideologues. It has a life, a logic, and an integrity of its own that must be respected.
The Los Angeles Times makes the case that Miers's Ivylessness is an advantage:
It takes a very strong (or very principled) constitution to do without that intellectual flattery [from the establishment left]. But perhaps that makes Miers the perfect candidate. Perhaps it takes someone who did not go to Harvard or Yale and has never seemed to care. Miers went to law school at Southern Methodist University, which, although a well-respected institution, was unlikely to have been a bastion of progressive thought when she entered it in 1970.
Adds
Thomas Lifson:
Critics are playing the Democrats' game. The GOP is not the party which idolizes Ivy League acceptability as the criterion of intellectual and mental fitness. Nor does the Supreme Court ideally consist of the nine greatest legal scholars of an era. Like any small group, it is better off being able to draw on abilities of more than one type of personality.
