Harriet Miers: A Corporate wet dream come true?

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Op-Ed: Miers And Roberts: A CEO's Dream Team

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By Lee Drutman
TomPaine.com
October 18, 2005

Lee Drutman is the co-author of The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy.

For those trying to make sense of President Bush's decision to nominate Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, here's a question: What do Miers and John Roberts have in common, besides the fact that they were both nominated to the Supreme Court?

Answer: Both had substantial careers as corporate lawyers before being nominated.

Roberts spent 13 years a partner at Hogan & Hartson LLP, where he argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of such corporate clients as Digital Equipment Corp., Peabody Coal Co. and Toyota Motor Corp., Chrysler Corp., Litton Systems, WellPoint Health Networks, Fox and NBC, among others. He also served as a registered lobbyist for the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association before the Food and Drug Administration on commercial speech issues.

Miers, meanwhile "has a blue-chip résumé that would wow Wall Street," as Business Week correspondent Lorraine Woellert put it in Sunday's Washington Post . Miers was a managing partner of the Dallas law firm Locke Liddell & Sapp, where she handled consumer class-action lawsuits for Microsoft Corp., the Texas Automobile Dealers Association, and former mortgage industry giant Lomas & Nettleton. She has also defended Dupont, Disney and Miramax, among others. Additionally, Miers has served as a board member of Dallas' Better Business Bureau and the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce.

Such legal service to large corporations is not typically part of the resume of a Supreme Court Justice. As Bruce Josten, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's top lobbyist, told the Christian Science Monitor , "Having two justices, Roberts and Miers, who we expect to join him shortly, that's adding two to nothing from the point of view of that kind of experience. That's big for the business community."




http://www.civilrights.org/issues/nominations/details.cfm?id=36903

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