Joy

The withdrawal of the Harriet Miers nomination brings a sigh and awe to both conservatives and liberals across the nation who had extensive doubts about Bush’s close friend being a Supreme Court Justice. Without a judicial history and clear judicial philosophy, across the red blogosphere pundit after pundit felt Bush’s choice was bent towards cronyism and made unintelligently. While she probably would have been conservative vote on the court on abortion and business issues, her lack an engrained constitutional philosophy I feel would hurt her tremendously. The last thing we need on the court is another O’Connor who shuffles back and forth, reading the Constitution differently for each issue and case that comes before the court. What the Supreme Court needs are more people that are going to take its original words seriously and serve with consistent principles and judicial ideals. George Will summed up the main problem with Miers extremely well:

In their unseemly eagerness to assure Miers' conservative detractors that she will reach the ``right'' results, her advocates betray complete incomprehension of this: Thoughtful conservatives' highest aim is not to achieve this or that particular outcome concerning this or that controversy. Rather, their aim for the Supreme Court is to replace semi-legislative reasoning with genuine constitutional reasoning about the Constitution's meaning as derived from close consideration of its text and structure. Such conservatives understand that how you get to a result is as important as the result. Indeed, in an important sense, the path the Supreme Court takes to the result often is the result.

We can be thankful that Miers withdrew her nomination today and be hopeful that Bush will nominate a man or woman of great judicial knowledge and a reputation of judicial conservatism and restraint.