Article Launched: 10/11/2005 01:00:00 AM
By Ed Quillen
Denver Post Columnist
At first, it was hard to know how to respond to President George W. Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers, a Texas attorney with no judicial experience, to the U.S. Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts holds a more prominent position, but he replaced William Rehnquist, a reliable conservative vote. Miers would replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has often been a swing vote in 5-4 decisions.
Thus Miers could change the balance of the court in a way that Roberts does not, and that has a lot of people worried - some because she would change the balance, and others because they're scared she won't.
But perhaps there's no good reason to be worried, one way or the other. For one thing, Supreme Court decisions may not be all that important anyway, and for another, how could the court get much worse?
Let's start with importance. Perhaps the most potent decision from the Rehnquist Court was Bush vs. Gore in 2000. But every thorough count of those hanging chads gave Bush a victory, so the Supreme Court decision was irrelevant. The Supreme Court did not change the course of history; at most it hastened it.
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Complete article at: http://denverpost.com/quillen/ci_3104337
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
Posted by fred7004 at October 12, 2005 07:42 AM