October 11, 2005
NO WONDER THE LAWYERS ALL HATE HER:
Papers Offer Peek at Miers's Views (Jo Becker and John Pomfret, October 11, 2005, Washington Post)
As a corporate lawyer, Harriet Miers once urged then-Gov. George W. Bush to veto legislation that would have prohibited the Texas Supreme Court from regulating or capping attorneys' fees, charging that the legislation did "violence to the balance of power between the legislative and judicial branch."Posted by Orrin Judd at October 11, 2005 1:45 PMMiers, President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, said in her 1995 letter to Bush that the legislation was a blatant attempt to protect a "handful of greedy, but immensely rich and powerful" trial lawyers. [...]
Bill Whitehurst, former president of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, said lawmakers were concerned that the state Supreme Court was "getting ready to do something that was not the court's prerogative."
But Miers called the legislation an "assault" on the state Supreme Court's authority to regulate and discipline lawyers and said the legislature had overstepped its bounds. If the bill became law, she warned, it would only benefit special interests that had "brought shame on this State, badly hurt our economic development efforts and continue to this day to cause our State to be held in disrepute for 'justice for sale.' " Bush vetoed the bill.
I'd have vetoed the bill too because of its practical effects, but it is troubling that Ms. Miers thought that the bill would ahve done violence to the proper separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branch. Passing a bill like that is well within the rights of the legislature. Legislation to reign in the courts is something conservatives beleive legitimate.
Posted by: rds at October 11, 2005 2:43 PMrds:
It is well-settled law throughout the entire common law world that courts have an inherent jurisdiction to prevent abuses of their own processes.
Posted by: Peter B at October 11, 2005 5:14 PM