Professor Balkin, on the Miers' nomination:

I have left the most important reason for Democrats to oppose the Miers nomination until the last. It has little to do with strategic political considerations. Democrats, like all Americans, should want the Supreme Court to be staffed with the best possible candidates-- candidates who have the legal skills and expertise to handle the issues that come before the nation's highest Court and who have the experience, judgment and gravitas to make good decisions when the law is unclear or unsettled. The Court needs and deserves judges who are both excellent lawyers and judicial statesmen. As of now, Harriet Miers, for all of her admirable qualities, does not seem to be that sort of person. Perhaps she will convince us otherwise in the upcoming hearings, but if she does not, the Democrats should oppose her. It is true that Bush may nominate someone even more conservative if Miers is not confirmed, but in one important sense this is beside the point. Democrats who care about the institution of the Court, and who care about the future of the Constitution, should want good people on the bench even if their views about the Constitution differ in important respects from their own. That is what it means to act in the public interest and for the public good: to safeguard and protect the vitality and the quality of the key institutions of American government-- whether they be the Congress, the President, or the courts.

I'm inclined to agree with the professor. At this point, it's going to take an unexpectedly impressive performance by the nominee before the Senate Judiciary Committee to overcome the presumption that she is not well-qualified for the Supreme Court. I have not been impressed yet by the accusations made most frequently by my ideological cohorts on the left, that she is either unprecedently unqualified or that she is ethically suspect (one blogger even went so far as to make a ludicrous comparison with Kenneth Lay because her law firm represented a client in activities that were "potentially abusive or illegal", a practice that would disqualify every tax attorney in the country from future high court consideration), but I still haven't seen anything that would lead me to believe that she is a good choice for the Court. If she seems to be as out to sea before the Judiciary Committee next week as she has been the last two weeks, the only principled course to follow should be to work to defeat her, and take what follows on its own terms.