Harriet Ellan Miers (born August 10, 1945) is a Republican lawyer and former White House Advisor to President George W. Bush. In 2005, he was nominated by Bush to be Supreme Court Justice of the US to replace retired Judge Sandra Day O'Connor, but the bipartisan opposition prompted President Bush to withdraw his candidacy.
Video Harriet Miers
Early life and education
Miers was born in Dallas, Texas, and spent most of his life there until he moved to Washington, D.C. (2001) to work in the Bush administration. He describes himself as "a Texan through and through." He is the fourth of five children of real estate investors, Harris Wood Miers Sr., and his wife, former Erma (Sally) Grace Richardson.
Miers graduated from Hillcrest High School, a public high school, in 1963.
Miers enters the Southern Methodist University intending to become a teacher. His family's economic difficulties were so bad that he almost dropped out of school in his first year, but he was able to find a part-time job that made him graduate from college. Then his father had a debilitating stroke. When a lawyer helps organize his family's financial situation, Miers is inspired to enter law school. Miers graduated from Southern Methodist University with a bachelor's degree in mathematics (1967) and from his Law School with a Doctor Juris (1970).
Maps Harriet Miers
Careers
In the summer of 1968, between the second and third years of his law school, Miers worked as a scribe for Belli, Ashe, Ellison, Choulos & amp; Lieff, San Francisco law firm founded by Melvin Belli. Miers is drowned in the lawsuit. His boss was Robert Lieff, who later became a partner at the Belli firm and later founder of the famous national plaintiff law firm, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein. In a 2005 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Lieff stated that Miers "sees what we do for people who need to get lawyers and can only get lawyers at a contingent cost."
After graduating from law school, from 1970 to 1972 the Miers was a law officer for US District Court Judge Judge for the Northern District of Texas, Joe E. Estes. She was admitted to a Texas bar in 1970 and treated in a DC bar in 1997.
In the late 1990s, while Miers was on the advisory board for the Southern Methodist University law school, he helped create and fund a series of Women Studies lectures called after the Texas lawyer Louise B. Raggio, who was a mentor to the Miers. Raggio, who died in 2011, has known Miers for nearly 40 years, ever since Miers was a student at Southern Methodist University. Miers is a class behind Raggio's kid in high school, and Raggio becomes a mentor for Miers; many years later he served as Miers' close adviser during the Texas Bar race. "I'm interested in having a woman president," Raggio said. "She is a woman to be elected, a woman with a big company behind her.Groups support her because they want to show that a woman will be a competent president."
From 1972 to 2001 Miers worked for Dallas law firm Locke, Liddell & amp; Sapp (and its predecessor company before the merger). He was the first female lawyer hired by the company and later became its president. When the merger created Locke, Liddell & amp; Sapp happened in 1999, he became a legal business partner partner with more than 400 lawyers. In 2000 the company completed a $ 22 million lawsuit accusing the company of "assisting clients in deceiving investors". According to the Action Class Reporter, Miers "says the company denies any obligation with respect to its representative of Erxleben." Obviously, we are evaluating that this is the right time to solve and resolve this issue and that it is in the best interest of the firm to do so, "Miers said.
As a commercial litigator, he represents clients including Microsoft and Walt Disney Company.
In 1986, Miers became the first female president of the Dallas Bar Association. In 1992, Miers became the first woman to head the State Bar of Texas. He has served as chair of the Editorial Board for the American Bar Association Journal and as chair of the ABA Commission on Multi-Jurisdictional Practices.
In 1989, Miers was elected for a two-year term as a member of the Dallas City Council. He did not run for reelection in 1991 after the restructuring of the city council converted Miers' big seat into a district seat.
Miers met George W. Bush in January 1989 at an annual Austin dinner for legislators and other important people. Nathan Hecht, a mutual friend and dating Miers, made the introduction. Miers then worked as general counsel for Bush's transition team in 1994, when he was first elected as Governor of Texas. He later became Bush's private lawyer and worked as a lawyer in the 2000 presidential campaign.
While the head of the State Bar of Texas, Miers joins a failed attempt to have the American Bar Association maintain its neutrality position on abortion. ABA has adopted the neutrality of abortion at its annual meeting of 1990 in Chicago after being strongly opposed by the State Bar of Texas for a pro-choice position. In the summer of 1992, at its annual meeting in San Francisco, the problem was again delayed before the ABA trial. Miers, who was not involved in the Chicago meeting, endorsed ABA abortion abortion in San Francisco. At a meeting of San Francisco, the ABA Assembly and the House of Delegates voted to take the position of pro-abortion rights, and the Texas state bar canceled its plan to ask ABA's policy-making body to hold a referendum of 370,000 members of the group on the issue.
Since September 1994, Miers has contributed to various Republican campaigns (at the same time he started working for George W. Bush), including Kay Bailey Hutchison, Phil Gramm, and Pete Sessions, with recorded contributions to candidates and total Republican causes nearly $ 12,000. The previous political history showed support for Democrats during the 1980s, noting contributions to Democratic candidates and causes, including the Democratic National Committee, Senate Lloyd Bentsen campaign and the 1988 presidential campaign of Al Gore, for a total of $ 3,000. His last recorded contribution to the cause or Democratic campaign was in 1988. Ed Gillespie said he was a "conservative Democrat" at the time.
In April 2007, Locke Lord Bissell & amp; Liddell announces that Miers is returning to the firm. In his new role at the company, Miers has enlisted in the US Department of Justice as an agent for the Pakistan People's Party and the Pakistan Embassy.
Government services
In 1995, George W. Bush, then Texas Governor, appointed Miers to lead the Texas Lottery Commission. Some people praised Miers for reforming the commission after the previous corruption scandal.
His tenure was also criticized. In 1997, the commission under the Miers hired Lawrence Littwin as executive director but fired him five months later. At that time, the contract to operate the lottery was organized by a politically connected GTech Corporation, which had been awarded a contract with the help of former Texas Lieutenant Governor (Democrat Ben Barnes). Littwin, as director, initiated an investigation into whether GTech has made an illegal campaign contribution and whether GTech owes a multimillion dollar commission for breach of contract. He states that Miers ordered him to stop the investigation. He brought a lawsuit stating that he was fired in retaliation for the investigation and to ensure that GTech would retain his contract.
According to the Texans for Public Justice, GTech paid Littwin $ 300,000 to settle the lawsuit.
Miers resigned from the lottery commission in early 2000, a year before his term ended. He said his resignation had nothing to do with the sales left in the game's biggest system game, Lotto Texas, but rather that he wanted to allow his replacement time to prepare for major drawing operator contracts.
There was some speculation during Bush's 2000 campaign that Bush would appoint Miers to the position of the Attorney General. This is seen as possible with the trustworthy role of Bush's private lawyer and his many appointments during his term as governor. It also reminded William French Smith, who was Ronald Reagan's private lawyer before being appointed Attorney General. Miers is not elected and John Ashcroft becomes Attorney General.
In January 2001, Miers followed Bush to Washington, D.C., serving as Assistant President and Staff Secretary for the first two years of his presidency. In that role, he opposed the 2001 government's decision to stop working with the ABA rating of the would-be judges. In 2003, he was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. In November 2004, Bush named him to replace Alberto Gonzales, his candidate for the Attorney General, for the White House Counsel, the chief legal advisor to the President's Office.
Miers is said to be one of Bush's close friends and seems to be given excessive praise to the President. According to former speechwriter David David Frum, Miers calls Bush the most brilliant man he has ever met and says he is "the best governor ever." He also stated that "serving President Bush and Mrs Bush is an impossible privilege to elaborate" and noted that Bush's personal qualities "create a bright future for our nation and people around the world as possible."
Miers' last public address before his candidacy was given to the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce on June 2, 2005.
Nomination and withdrawal of the Supreme Court
On July 1, 2005, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced his intention to retire after receiving confirmation from his successor. Bush appointed Miers as head of the search committee for the candidate. On July 19, Bush nominated John Roberts to replace O'Connor. However, a few weeks later, Supreme Court Justice William H. Rehnquist died of thyroid cancer. Bush then pulled Roberts out of consideration as a substitute for O'Connor, instead of nominating Roberts to fill the void of Supreme Court Justice. The Senate confirmed Roberts on September 29.
Meanwhile, Bush is considering nominating Miers as O'Connor's successor, considering some suggestions from some senators that candidates should come from outside the appeals court system. This led some commentators to draw parallels with the 2000 elections, when Dick Cheney, head of Bush's vice president's search committee, was eventually elected vice-presidential candidate.
On October 3, 2005, Bush nominated Miers to serve as High Court Judge, saying, "Harriet Miers will be the type of judge I say I will choose: a good conservative judge." The Miers nomination was criticized by people from various political views due to the fact that he never served as a judge at any level, he regarded the lack of intellectual rigidity, his close personal ties to Bush, and the lack of clear records of possible issues. to be met as the Chief Justice. Many prominent conservatives have strongly condemned his candidacy, and many conservative groups are usually regarded as part of Bush's planned political base to launch an organized opposition campaign.
Miers met with the Senate Judiciary Committee after his nomination and in that meeting he was unprepared and did not know about the law. Senator Tom Coburn told him personally that he "failed" and "had to say something next time." Miers has difficulty expressing his views and explaining the basic concepts of constitutional law. Miers has no experience in constitutional law and has no extensive litigation experience; at his Texas law firm, he's more than a manager. In addition, Miers rarely handled the call and did not understand the complicated constitutional question that the senator asked him. For White House lawyers, Miers is "less a lawyer than a law firm manager and bar association president."
In an unprecedented move, Senate Judiciary Committee Chief Arlen Specter and Democrat Patrick Leahy also called for Miers to return some answers to the questionnaire submitted to him by the Committee, noting that his responses were "inadequate," "not enough," and "insult" because he failed or refused to answer questions with sufficient accuracy or with sufficient detail. Miers is also claimed to have personally declared confidence in the privacy rights to the pro-choice Arlen Specter, only to then deny that he has communicated the position. The answer also includes an error in constitutional law in which he mentions explicit constitutional rights for proportional representation; although many court decisions have found that legislative and other districts of an unequal population violate the same protection clause, the right to proportional districts is not explicitly stated in the Constitution of the United States.
After Miers failed in this private meeting, Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Sam Brownback began drafting a letter requesting the office of the President to hand over Miers' legal memos and directives to Bush, to explain his views on the political issue. Brownback and Graham know the memos are protected by the executive privilege, that the White House is not required to hand them over, and that Miers can refuse to give the memos and then pretend to withdraw from the principle. Miers will later use this request as part of a saving exit strategy to resign. In his letter revoking his nomination, he pointed to the senator's request for a confidential document as potentially damaging to the independence of the executive branch.
Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) stated shortly after the meeting that "I think, if you are going to vote today, he will not get a majority, either on the Judiciary Committee or on the floor." However, Specter, the chairman of the committee, dismissed the notion that the Miers nomination was wobbly. He said that most senators await trial before deciding. "There is no one way sound or other," he told CBS ' Face the Nation . On October 19, 2005, Specters and Leahy announced their intention to start a confirmation hearing for Miers on November 7, 2005.
On October 27, 2005, the White House announced that Harriet Miers had asked President Bush to withdraw his nomination, citing fears that the nomination would create "a burden for the White House and its staff and that is not in the best interests of the country.". "President Bush stated that the Senate's interest in the White House internal document" would undermine a president's ability to accept honest advice "and that he" grudgingly accepted "his request.Meers was the first Supreme Court candidate to be withdrawn since Douglas H. Ginsburg in 1987 and the seventh to do so in US history.
Bush then nominated Samuel Alito for a seat on October 31, 2005. The Senate later asserted Alito on January 31, 2006. Miers remains as White House Counsel for the following year until announcing his resignation on January 4, 2007.
Resignation and departure from the White House
Joshua B. Bolten, after serving as President Bush's chief of staff in April 2006, suppressed Miers' resignation, but Bush rejected the idea. After the 2006 elections, when the Democrats won a majority of both Chamber of Congresses, Bolten asked again about his departure, arguing that the president needed an aggressive lawyer and increased his staff to the Office of the Counsel to fend off congressional questions and summons from the courts. The second attempt was successful; Miers announced his resignation January 4, 2007 and left January 31, 2007. In April 2007, Miers reunited with the previous firm, Locke Liddell & amp; Sapp, and became a partner in his litigation and public policy group. He has offices in Austin, Dallas, and Washington, D.C. The company is now known as Locke Lord.
Dismissal of the US lawyer controversy
Kyle Sampson, chief of staff for Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, wrote to Miers in January 2006 to recommend that the Justice Department and the Advisory Office for the President work together to seek the replacement of a number of US Attorneys, saying that limits the number of lawyers "targeted for deletion and replaced "will" reduce shocks to the system that will result from cross-party firing. " In March 2007 the White House has suggested that the plan comes from Miers, who had left the White House in January 2007, before the dismissal received public attention. The dismissal has led to a Congressional inquiry into dismissal.
On 13 June 2007, the Senate Representative Committee and the House of Representatives issued a summons to Miers and to Sara M. Taylor, former assistant deputy to President Bush and director of White House political affairs, asking them to produce documents and appear before the committee to testify. about what role, if any, both may exist in the US Attorney, sparking controversy. Miers was asked to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 11, 2007. The White House reiterates the longstanding demand that no White House officials in the past or present will be allowed to testify under oath before the panel, and that personal interviews, not below oath, and without transcripts will be allowed. The Speaker of the House and the Senate Judiciary Committee reiterated that the term "White House" is unacceptable. A ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee Arlen Specter (R-PA) said the committee had "completely no response from the White House" about a possible testimony about the dismissal of several US lawyers, and that has prompted a subpoena to force a response. Miers refused to appear before Congress because Bush ordered him not to do so. On Wednesday, July 25, 2007, the House Judiciary Committee voted 22-17 to quote Miers for Congress's humiliation for its failure to appear before the committee in response to a subpoena. On February 14, 2008, the full Representative Council voted to quote him for the humiliation by the vote of 223-32. Many Republicans came out of the protest space, jeering at the speaker's priority in the vote, as opposed to a vote on the supervisory bill.
On March 4, 2009, Miers and former Deputy Chief of Staff for President Bush Karl Rove agreed to testify under oath before Congress about the dismissal of US lawyers.
Awards and honors
Personal life
Miers mother and three brothers live in Dallas. She has a sister, Kitty, who has died. Miers is unmarried and has no children.
He is a close friend of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Minister of Agriculture Ann Veneman. Texas Supreme Court Justice, Nathan Hecht has known him for over 25 years. After the nomination of Miers to the Supreme Court, Hecht was quoted as an unofficial spokesperson representing his views.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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